Apocrypha
by Dana Janeway
Summary: If you liked this story, there is an exciting sequel in progress called "Star of the County Down." Reviews are always appreciated! -Dana
1. Chapter 1

_Avec la garde montante_

_Nous arrivons, nous voila_

_Nous marchons la tete haute_

_Comme de petits soldats_

_Sonne trompette eclatante!_

She hated opera. Loved chamber music, loved the symphony – hated opera. Why the infernal chorus from _Carmen_ was playing itself over and over in her head was an unanswerable question.

_With the guard we arrive, here we are_

_We march like little soldiers, heads held high._

Over the balding heads of admirals and dignitaries, she glared. This was a press conference, the longest, most drawn-out press conference of her career. Why did it not please her to discuss her crowning achievement, the safe return of _Voyager_'s crew to Earth? Because, she told herself, Kathryn Janeway is a woman of action. Kathryn Janeway does not like to rest on her laurels.

Someone had told her that there was an underground group who believed that the Federation had entered into a conspiracy with the Borg collective to assimilate planet Earth. Someone else had mentioned a theory that the real starship _Voyager _had crashed years earlier and that none of the crewmembers who had returned to Earth were real people. For some reason, these stories appeared to her as infinitely more interesting than the truth.

There they were, the two of them, Chakotay and Seven of Nine. Just watching them made her blood turn to stone. She could hardly believe he couldn't feel her eyes boring into him, sending their venom directly into his brain. Nothing. He didn't turn around, probably didn't blink. She didn't exactly think that humans were capable of telepathy, but her own pitiful lack of ability in this regard surprised her. One more try. Come on, Chakotay. That's an order.

Kathryn Janeway left the _Voyager_ press conference three days early.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"Mom, I don't _know _why she's not coming. She wouldn't say."

Gretchen Janeway's face had aged twenty years in two days. She sat down shakily.

"Mom, are you all –"

"Of course I'm not!" she snapped. "Something is wrong with my daughter. How can I be all right when my daughter isn't coming home?"

Phoebe was silent. Her conversation with Kathryn had been strange, even eerie. Her sister's voice was hoarse, and she had sounded as if she were still in the Delta Quadrant instead of only a few miles away in San Fransisco. Phoebe had been so looking forward to the conversation, yet it had left her cold, and something else that she couldn't describe – afraid? Ashamed?

"Look, I'm really sorry, but I can't get away right now. In a few weeks I will."

"But Kathryn – "

She remembered the com system going dead, the expression of incredulity frozen on a face that was in so many ways the mirror image of her sister's.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Kathryn Janeway paced around her room in the Starfleet Officers' housing complex, a caged animal. Displayed on billboards and news channels all over the world, her name and her face. But the crackpot theory had been true; _Voyager_ was a ghost ship. On many of the broadcasts, it appeared pale, almost white. As did Kathryn herself. Overcome with anxiety, she imagined herself as a wraith, caught somewhere between life and death.

She had been afraid ever since _Voyager_ landed, of the hard ground beneath her feet, of the gravity on the Earth's surface. In order to fall asleep at night, she had to first ride the public transportation system for at least an hour. Earth, she knew, was not motionless; it only felt that way. She told herself in a calm voice that the planet was rotating around its axis at a speed of a thousand miles an hour, and traveling through space at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. But somehow that knowledge did not appease her. Sleep was brief and fitful, and she dreamed of nothing but _Voyager_ –_Voyager_ as a ghost ship, _Voyager_ as a museum, _Voyager_ demolished and destroyed at a Federation impounding lot. She held the fragments of its outer hull in her hands, trying pathetically to put them back together. A shell, with nothing inside. A model spaceship in disrepair. A toy.

If she was slowly alienating the people around her, she didn't care. It was all she could do to follow protocol, let alone be friendly. She watched with a sick fascination as her former companions adjusted themselves to life on an almost stationary planet. Didn't they realize that every body of water on Earth was becoming stagnant – that everything in motion was at an intolerable rate of deceleration? The gravity was palpable. Footsteps sank into the ground like boulders, and lifting a coffee cup was the work of a heavyweight champion. The trees swayed at a grandfather's pace, a parody. The ineffectual wind stopped trying. Stray leaves heaved themselves onto the cement, and stuck. The moon inched closer, casting a long, distorted shadow. Streetlamps on the Federation base bent their noses to the ground.

Kathryn pressed her hand against the cool window. She pressed hard. Her labored breathing was because of the gravity, she said to herself. It was a side effect. Gravity does these things. It brings everything in close, closer, until every atom and every heartbeat converge, until the very act of drawing air into one's lungs becomes insurmountably difficult.

This was why it was necessary to escape from gravity, before escape became impossible. Kathryn took her hand from the window and ran it through her hair. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she wasn't thinking clearly. The thoughts she had been having lately were different than the thoughts she had generally had while aboard _Voyager_ – weren't they? But then, she couldn't quite remember how she had used to think. It was too long ago. She had to get out of that room. So many offers, so many invitations, all of them equally distasteful. She felt a momentary pang of guilt for the worry she was causing her family.

_Top Headlines: Voyager Returns! Exclusive Interview with Captain Kathryn Janeway… Federation Launches New Diplomatic Program… Have the Lines of Communication Opened Between Quadrants?... _No. No… Why did these broadcasts always have to be the same?

"Attention Starfleet Officers! Looking for a thrill?"

A tall young man with a feverish expression stared at her through the screen.

"Been on the ground for too long? Looking for the ride of your life?"


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

A few weeks after the _Voyager_ press conference, Commander Chakotay fulfilled one of his lifelong dreams, and went on an archaeological expedition. By the time he returned, San Francisco was recovering from a bad rainstorm. When his shuttlecraft landed, all he could think was that it would be a tremendous relief to leave California forever. He had no sense of nostalgia for this place, no real affinity for Starfleet and certainly no love for the weather. His plan was to go south, and to reconnect with the people of his tribe. The offer of a teaching position at the Academy did not appeal to him any longer.

He remembered his last days on _Voyager_ as a breach from reality. The things he had said and done, and the plans he had made were all foreign to him now. He had not anticipated the stress of being torn away from his home of seven years. _Voyager_ had, at times, felt like a prison, but his work, his routines, his safety, and his deepest desires were aboard that ship, even now as she lay in a docking port on a Starfleet space station. He found it almost impossible to sleep in any other bed, in a place where he did not know that Kathryn Janeway was sleeping only a few doors away.

He remembered every word of the imagined conversations he had shared with her, every choreographed love scene of his troubled nights, but then the hours of grateful rest that came after them. He had not understood this about his life; the sheer pleasure he took in living in a fantasy he could never hope to bring about. Knowing that it would be over shook him to the core, and aroused in him the anger and the sense of betrayal he had long buried. But by the day the _Voyager_ press conference began, he and Seven of Nine were no longer a couple, and he had resolved to have it out with Kathryn once and for all.

She had made that impossible. He understood that his actions had destroyed any chance of a future with her, but at the same time, he couldn't leave San Francisco alone, knowing that she was there. It was a ghost town for him. Hadn't he arrived here many years ago, finally able to hold her hand and walk with her down the rainy streets as her lover, her husband even? Hadn't his dream world inhabited San Francisco long enough? It couldn't really exist this way, so dark and forbidding, and ripe with the pain they had caused one another.

"Seven, I've been utterly unfair to you." He hadn't realized it at the time, but he had quoted _The Sound of Music_ to her. Tom's twentieth-century trivia had finally got the best of him. Still, he didn't think there was any way he could have truly made Seven understand. She was not yet so cunning. The endless permutations of rage, grief, guilt and revenge were as yet unknown to her, and he would never forgive himself for showing her the worst side of human nature. Thanks to him, she knew that people told lies, even those supposedly deserving of trust. Thanks to him, she knew to be suspicious of tender words, and of the goodwill shown to her by her closest friends. What kind of monster would have done such a thing? Surely not someone interested in spirituality, someone who spent days meditating in search of growth and renewal. That was all a sham now, thanks to Kathryn. What exactly she had done to him he would never know, but she was able to claim from him the most worshipful love and utter despair at the same time.

The central Starfleet administration building was bright with artificial lights. Chakotay's heart pounded as he approached the desk and asked for Kathryn Janeway. He had, as yet, no idea what he would say, but he believed that the sight of her would make it clear. He came to her door and looked in. The office was empty, the light still on. Finding the door open, he cautiously stepped inside.

Kathryn! The room was a disaster. A leafy plant clung to the wall for dear life. Computer pads made the desk five feet tall – all of them unread.

"You have ninety-seven messages," remarked the computer.

He searched for half-finished cups of coffee, her extra Starfleet shirt, but did not find these items. She hadn't been here in days, maybe weeks. He gently touched the back of her chair and looked through the window at the silver Starfleet buildings. Suddenly the office felt terribly cold, and he turned on his heel.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, motioning to a white-haired Admiral whose name he should have known. "This room is Captain Janeway's, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Do you know if she's been in today?"

The Admiral tightened the muscles in his wide jaw. "I'm afraid I don't know anything about Captain Janeway's whereabouts," he said primly, and walked away.

Chakotay stared after him, open-mouthed. This was hardly any way to talk about _Voyager'_s revered Captain. What could have changed since the press conference? He tried to remember if he had heard any news headlines about her on his way back to Earth. Nothing came to mind, but he rarely listened to broadcasts.

"You pass me in the hallway and don't even say hello. So that's how it's going to be!"

He looked up, startled.

"B'Elanna." He tried to resist the urge to laugh, but couldn't entirely. "The day I see you in the Starfleet administration building is the day I-"

"The day you what, Chakotay?"

"Never mind."

"Don't get too excited. I was here clearing up an engineering report, believe me, I'll be on my way. Are you…" Her eyes traveled to the empty office next door.

"I was looking for –" He stopped, shocked by the concern in her eyes. "B'Elanna, what's going on?"

"Oh, that's right," she said. "You've been away. You didn't know. I'm so sorry, Chakotay."

"Didn't know _what_?"

"Keep your voice down," she said. "Look, I'm done here. Let's go someplace where we can talk."

"I don't understand. I have no idea what you're saying. What is Apocrypha?"

B'Elanna sighed. "It's – a club, sort of. I'm surprised you never heard of it before. I always knew what it was."

"Enlighten me."

"I don't know too much," she said. "But they do a lot of unconventional stuff. Space races, stunt flying. A lot of Apocrypha members are ex-Starfleet pilots. They try to get officers who are fed up with Starfleet, that way they don't have to train civilians off the street."

Chakotay let out his breath. "I see."

"The Federation doesn't want anything to do with them. They use non-regulation vessels, but they borrow Starfleet specs and even Starfleet parts when they can get their hands on them. Legally, there isn't much anyone can do unless it could be proven that Apocrypha is using unauthorized equipment, but that's difficult. Rather than deal with the bad publicity, Starfleet apparently sold them one of its space stations a few years ago. That's the rumor, anyway."

"Rumor? You don't know?"

"There's a lot of secrecy surrounding them. Sometimes they advertise on official channels, but generally they keep a low profile and wait for people to find them."

Chakotay raised an eyebrow.

"Don't look at me!" said B'Elanna. "I was never interested. I've had my wild days, but I draw the line at this stuff. I knew a guy who was involved with Apocrypha once, he lost an eye in one of their stupid races. I'm no diplomat, but the kind of business they do is terrible for the Federation. They wage contests with alien racing clubs, and they've gotten into some serious trouble, more than once."

"And what you're telling me is that Captain Janeway has-" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"Again," said B'Elanna, "I don't know. When she disappeared after the press conference, a lot of us were very concerned. I even contacted her family, who all said they had heard from her once and then not for weeks. She didn't come in to headquarters. She left her paperwork unfinished, as you've just seen. She didn't answer her page. I looked in every logical place, and when all options had been exhausted I started looking in illogical places."

"What made you think of this – Apocrypha?"

"I… happened to stop by a bar I used to go to, it's a bit south of the city. Some people were talking, they said that Apocrypha had just scored a Starfleet Captain."

"You happened to stop by a bar?"

"Tom and I had an argument."

Chakotay nodded. "Okay. So what are we going to do?"

"I was hoping you'd have some suggestions. Do you have any idea why she would do something like this?"

"I – no. I don't. I can't believe it. We're not sure it's her, are we?"

"No… I don't know what it is, Chakotay. I think it's her."

He tried in vain to picture Kathryn, a stunt pilot flying a non-regulation vessel. It seemed fantastical.

B'Elanna cast her eyes down. "Apocrypha is no joke. My friend was lucky to get out of the race alive. If Captain Janeway is mixed up with them she should leave as soon as possible. Chakotay, I know this might not be easy to talk about."

He rose from his chair. "I don't know what there is to talk about! Why would she do this?" His thought was that he shouldn't have gone on the expedition, but he knew it probably wouldn't have made any difference.

"Did she express any… frustration to you, before _Voyager_ landed? Or after? Was she angry about something? Did anything happen that would make her want to lash out?"

He turned back to her. "You've become quite the psychologist."

"I'm just trying to think of what would motivate me to join Apocrypha. I mean, the whole thing makes no sense. Captain Janeway just got home from a seven-year mission. She is – or at least was – Starfleet's poster child. She could do no wrong. Why would she want to throw that all away?"

"It's hopeless," he said. "Kathryn is a closed book. She always has been. You saw her at the press conference, didn't you? She's a chameleon. The perfect Captain, the perfect officer - but no one knows the person underneath. She's never talked to me about anything." He didn't want to see the surprise in B'Elanna's face.

"Really. Are you sure about that?"

"Of course I'm sure," he said, more harshly than he had intended. "What we need to do is figure out if it really is her, and then decide what to do about it."

B'Elanna got up also. "I'll call up my friend, I guess. I know he has nothing to do with Apocrypha now, but he'll have to know which space station Starfleet sold to them."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

_Apocrypha. _From the Greek, meaning "those who have been hidden away." She felt almost invisible as her ship swept off the Alpha Walker space station. She watched the sky merge from white to blue to black, and finally, gravity was no longer a match for her.

Her flight partner, a tall blond woman named Cassandra, turned to her and grinned.

"Let's pound some Klingon ass, shall we?"

Kathryn was momentarily stunned. She had forgotten about the rules of Apocrypha, and that Starfleet protocols no longer applied. But here she was. She had escaped; that was all that mattered.

"Sure," she said. And they were off.

"I hear you're Starfleet."

"Yeah."

Cassandra cast her a doubtful glance. "So what happened?"

Kathryn knew that this woman was only impressed with her because her maneuvers were so fast. Cassandra might not have even heard of _Voyager, _living out her days on Alpha Walker, home of Earth's castoffs.

"I finished my mission," said Kathryn. "And I just needed to get off the ground again. Nothing looked interesting. So I came here."

"Likely. Hey, they're tailing us pretty bad. Jump to warp."

"Now? We've got a long way to go, and I don't know who designed your warp core, but it certainly isn't regulation. I don't think we can -"

"Regulation?"

Kathryn realized her mistake.

"That is – I mean –"

"Look, you're not some Starfleet spy, are you, trying to infiltrate and shut us down? Because I'm not having any of that. I will parachute you back to the airfield and finish this myself."

"No!" Anything but the solid ground. "I'm not a spy, I swear. I'm going to warp. We'll rig the thing ourselves if we have to. I'm in it to win. Okay?"

Cassandra shrugged. "Okay."

They were silent for a few minutes.

"You can't tell me that nothing looked interesting in Starfleet, so you came running to Alpha Walker. Aren't you some big shot? An Admiral, or something?"

"A Captain," she said shortly. "I was in line to be an Admiral."

Cassandra let out a guffaw. "Well, don't hold your breath once they get wind of this."

Kathryn looked down. "That doesn't matter anymore. I told you, it doesn't interest me."

"Whew! They must have messed you around. Starboard. Sharp!"

"Oh, that was close!"

"These bastards are not giving up. Can we get warp six?"

"Not unless I shut down the auxiliary systems. What's feeding the manifold, anyway?"

"It's the same generator as the life support system."

Kathryn's eyes widened. "Whose brilliant idea was that?"

"You stay with us awhile, maybe you can make some adjustments. For now, get us to warp six, Admiral."

"Captain."

"Whatever. Just go!"

"Thrusters are offline! We're dead in the water!"

"Where's the backup system when we need it?"

"Hit them with whatever we've got. Open fire."

"Acknowledged."

"They're returning fire."

"You thought they'd send a thank you note?"

"Get them back."

"No, it's not worth it. I'm going to jog the engine manually."

"With the warp core online? You're crazy!"

"Well, you only live once. I'll let you know."

Kathryn's black racing gloves stung her hands. It had been a long time since she had seen an old school engine like this. Everything about the _Zephyr_ was old school. It had a computerized navigation system and almost no long-range scanning to speak of, so that getting anywhere was like paint-by-numbers. The main deck was tiny and the inside walls were a dusty brown. She saw a fused pressure valve in the tank and reached into her pocket out of habit, but realized that she had no Starfleet equipment on her, and the _Zephyr_ wouldn't have the resources to repair the valve.

"So?"

Cassandra's long face bore an expectant expression. Kathryn shook her head. "Valve."

"Damn it! Okay, fine. Cut the engine, switch to orbital. We're not going down without a fight."

Intellectually, Kathryn knew it was a bad idea. But she had to stop thinking like a Starfleet officer. "Yes, sir." Cassandra rolled her eyes.

"We're not going to make it, the orbital engine's failing!"

"Don't they teach all kinds of evasive maneuvers at the Academy? Now's the time, Admiral."

There was, needless to say, no time to program flight maneuvers into _Zephyr_'s computer. The other ship was closing in, and fast.

"Can you get right in their path and then flip the ship upwards, like in that holo-novel?"

Kathryn turned around furiously. "_What_ holo-novel?"

"I think it's called _Death On Impact._"

"Great. Well, I don't think there's anything else we can do at this rate, all we've got is attitude control and we might use it to our advantage. Hopefully they'll get out of our way."

"And if they don't?"

"You'd better hope _Death On Impact _isn't an accurate title."

Kathryn swung the ship onto the Klingons' flight path. "We could just turn the hazard lights on, you know."

Cassandra smirked. "No such thing."

Kathryn felt the blood rising in her temples as the other ship approached. If she could throw them off-course, that might buy a few minutes to breathe some life into the orbital engine and make a comeback.

"Impact in five."

"They're signaling. They have no clue what we're doing."

"Let's keep it that way. Four. Three. Two. Do it. _Now!_"

"What was that?"

She had underestimated the sluggishness of the orbital engine. The ship careened upward. She saw warp core particles cloud the space around them.

"We've been hit! There's – there's something going on with the warp core!"

"Yeah, it's called a leak. Shut it down!"

"I can't, not if we want to get back to Walker in time."

"In time for what?"

"Do you see this?" Cassandra pointed to a red warning light in the corner of her navigation screen.

"What is it?"

"The orbital engine is overheating. That's why you couldn't execute the maneuver. The _Zephyr_ is done for, we'll have to make an emergency landing. _Zephyr_ to Apocrypha. Come in, Apocrypha."

"This is Apocrypha. What's your status?"

"We have to forfeit. We'll be making an emergency landing in Walker Gulf, if we can get there. _Zephyr_'s a write-off. We're going to get the hell out when you give us the green light, okay?"

"Confirmed, _Zephyr._ Be prepared to jump from an altitude of two hundred feet."

Cassandra leaned through the escape hatch.

"More fun than you ever had in Starfleet, right?"

Kathryn Janeway, life preserver around her waist, racing gloves still clinging to her hands, felt more vibrantly alive than she had perhaps in years.

"This is the _Zephyr._ We're ready when you are, Apocrypha."

"On my mark, _Zephyr…_"

"Mark!"

The rush was almost unbearable. The wind whipped through her hair. She spread her arms wide. The sun was a blinding star, filling her eyes with flashes of light and darkness. She did not look down. This was flying, as long as she didn't think about the ground, about where she was headed. Upwards – she was flying upwards, into the sun, into the vast expanse of space that had always been her home. Gravity was nothing. The wind was propelling her, and her body was no heavier than a bird's, slender arms were her outstretched wings.

There was a deafening explosion, and then the force of the water overcame her. She was submerged, struggling helplessly for breath. The sun still shone in her eyes, but its light was displaced by the depths of Walker Gulf. Then, miraculously, the life preserver did its work and she surfaced. She opened her mouth and cold air filled her to the core. Her breath was jagged. She coughed up the water in her lungs.

"Hang on! They're getting us out of here!"

Kathryn saw red drops in the water. She tried to swim, but found her limbs too weak.

"Come on, grab the rope!"

She raised her eyes and saw through the sunlight a helicopter circling over the gulf. The thick rope descended, and her hands shook with the effort of holding on. Slowly, she was lifted from the cold water. She saw drops of blood on her chest and her black tank top. She saw anxious faces, motioning to her from above.

By the time the helicopter landed at the edge of Walker Gulf, debris from the _Zephyr_ explosion was floating harmlessly on the water. Kathryn stepped down from the landing, the wound on her cheek still drawing blood. She squinted her eyes and began to walk back to the airfield.

"Hey."

Cassandra's hand was on her arm.

"You did really great back there, Admiral. I'm surprised."

Kathryn smiled. "All I did was jump."

"Yeah, but you didn't lose it like those Starfleet washouts. Apocrypha doesn't know what it's doing, messing with Starfleet. Technology makes their pilots soft. They don't have the stomach for what we do. But you…" She responded to an alert on her pager.

"That's Administration. We have to report back."

"So? What do you think?"

Kathryn stared at the assignment on her computer pad. If this was Apocrypha's usual style, she could get used to it. Never a dull moment. But the particular race in question was not something she could enter into lightly. It was, in fact, her worst fear. She looked at Cassandra, the weather-beaten face and slightly sunken hazel eyes.

"Do you think it's something you can do?"

She wiped her cheek, and a red streak appeared on her hand. She examined the specifications. "This ship, the _Iberia. _How does it compare to _Zephyr_?"

"First class in our fleet. Don't tell the folks back home in San Francisco, but _Iberia_'s a Starfleet job."

Kathryn looked up sharply. "I can't be hearing that."

"Okay. You asked, I answered. It's top of the line, no more express landings."

She let out her breath.

"Can I see it first?"

"Sorry, but you don't get to do an inspection. You're in or you're out."

Kathryn ran her tongue thoughtfully along her upper lip. She halfway wanted to run, but she knew that running meant leaving the airfield, the space station, and returning to Earth. Apocrypha was a means of escape, but it was also a supreme challenge. It was forcing her to look the monster in the face, and to come out fighting. She clenched her hands into two tight fists. They felt so much stronger with the racing gloves on.

"I'm in," she said.

She strode calmly back towards the Gulf. The runway was silent now, but in less than an hour, she would head the roar of engines. She would once again be at the helm of a vessel, and feel the ground release her. The sun played on the rippling water, and she bent down. The fused pressure valve had washed up to shore. She held it for a moment then let it fall back with a lapping wave.

Slowly, she rose. A lone figure stood at the edge of Walker's Airfield, looking at her. Cautiously, Kathryn approached, the drenched racing uniform like a second skin. The sun obscured her view, and she raised her hand to her forehead. It was a man. Tall, dark-skinned, she thought. She made out black hair and a Starfleet uniform. She stopped dead in her tracks. It was Chakotay.


	6. Chapter 6

**Warning: sexual situations.**

Chapter Six

He caught up with her several miles from the airfield, in the genetically engineered brush of Alpha Walker. She did not bother to take a medical instrument to the scars he had noticed on her face and arms. Her entire body looked strange to him, taller, more athletic. She took long strides. Her back was straight and furious. Her clothes were wet. Water dripped from her dark red hair.

"Kathryn."

As he had expected, she did not acknowledge him but only walked away faster. He pursued through the crackling leaves.

"Kathryn."

She jerked her shoulder away from his hand.

"What do you want?"

The water still shone on her face, there was blood running down her cheek.

"Kathryn, you're bleeding."

That wasn't what he had come to say, and his time was up. She resumed her rigid walk.

He reached for her wrist, and when she couldn't wrench it away, he let go. She laughed, her eyes flashed, and it was too much for him. He took her waist and kissed her with all the ferocity he could muster, pushing her against an Alpha Walker white-barked tree.

Still, she laughed. Her arms felt the bark of the tree, not his body. She arched her back against the tree. She let his tongue deeper into her mouth. Then her hands were on his chest, forcing him backwards.

"What the hell are you doing?" she breathed.

He honestly had no idea. "I need you to listen to me –"

"Oh, I think I've done enough of that, over the years," she said, her arms swinging combatively at her sides. "Why don't you just go back home to your girlfriend? Or did she follow you all the way to Walker's Airfield? There's not much to see here."

"Kathryn –" He had to move closer to her, if only to force that self-satisfied smile.

"Oh I see," she said seductively, viciously. "You've decided to dispense with ethics altogether. Maybe she is here. Maybe she's watching." Then the smile disappeared, and she turned away from him.

"If you're talking about –"

"Who do you think I'm talking about, Chakotay? I'm not blind. You've made your bed, now you'll have to lie on it. I saw you together at the press conference. I willed you to turn around and have a look at me, but you didn't."

"Kathryn, I don't know what you think you saw, but I am not with Seven of Nine."

"Right." She was losing interest. He had to kiss her again. He hadn't done it right, the first time. He tried it again. He wanted to show her his love, his gentleness. But it came out wrong. She breathed ice into his mouth, her hand drew his sharply from her face to her breast. The sensation sent him reeling.

"Kath-"

"You know what, the hell with it," she said, pushing his frantic hands away. She lifted off the soaking wet tank top and threw it carelessly on the leaves. The shirt she had underneath was shorter and black, with the words _Apocrypha Racing Club_ scrawled across her chest.

"What do I care? Let her see it. Let's show her who you really are. We'll give her a good show, won't we?"

She stalked back to the tree and leaned against it. Her bare stomach glistened. She raised her arms languidly as if her own self against the tree were giving her more pleasure than he ever could.

He was frozen.

"Kathryn, I can't do this. Not when you hate me so much."

She purred. "No, I don't hate you."

"Kathryn."

"Chakotay. Chakotay."

The sound of her pronouncing his name was a slow death. He knew he was coming towards her.

"That's right. Come on."

Somehow she entwined her long arms around his neck. Somehow she looked at him, sidelong, lashes falling softly about her eyes.

"That's it… Okay. I don't hate you. Really. I - don't."

Again he tried to kiss her tenderly and again he failed, but this time he failed blissfully. She twisted his tongue inside her mouth. He pushed himself hard up against her. His hands struggled with the bark on the tree until he found hers. He slid his fingers against her palms, forcing off her black racing gloves. She did not allow her hands to touch his. She reached for his belt. He felt the tremendous weight of his fantasies, racking his brain for something that resembled this. Her legs rose. Her hips began to move in a tense rhythm, as if none of it were his decision at all. Finally he gave up and released the tree. His touch tore down her back and curved with her body to her wet thighs, he took them into his hands until they encircled him, until he actually began to believe that this was going to occur – that they would make love, for the first time, like this, against a makeshift tree in Walker's Airfield. She had his belt off, and his unendurable desire would have been inside her but for the few thin layers that separated them.

"No-" he said, "not like this. Kathryn, tell me you love me."

"What? You've got to be kidding me!" Her blue eyes were mocking but the intensity in them was unmistakable. He had seen that look before, countless times when it had been dangerous. He fought against the rushing blood in his veins. Could it be that he had her where he wanted her? He positioned himself exactly under her center, he grasped at her breasts the way she had wanted him to. She bit her lip and rocked her head back against the tree.

"Chakotay -"

"Not until you tell me."

"What?" She took a fierce hold of him, but he stroked her face.

"Kathryn, please!" he begged. "I can't do this unless you tell me-"

The next second, she had thrown him from her. She was standing quite erect, facing him. There was no sign at all that she had just been touching anyone. She looked like she had won a boxing match. She watched him gasp for air. She watched him wanting her. Did she think he wished he could take it back? Did she think he _would_ take it back, if he had known? He stared in disbelief.

"I have a race," she said, and disappeared into the brush. Maybe she needed to cool off - maybe there was another route back to the runway.

He placed his palm on the ragged bark of the tree where they had stood. It was hardly possible. Could he have been, only moments ago, in the arms of Kathryn Janeway? Could that lithe body have truly been hers, those cruel lips, that violent, thrilling touch? Yes, yes, it was Kathryn. But it was the force of her anger, not her feeling for him. He was wrong to have wanted it so badly. He wanted her so much more now, that he thought he could bring her back with the strength of that craving, and hold her against the tree and rip all her clothes away as he had always dreamed of doing, whether she loved him or not. He would stain her perfect mouth with his kisses, and she would repeat his name, not as she had before, but in earnest.

Still, he couldn't remember why he had thought to kiss her at all. It seemed, suddenly, the strangest thing he could have done. He had never done it before, and not even when he had been sure she loved him. Now he was fairly sure she hated him, and yet he had done it. She had returned to him, had responded to every urging of his body, had given herself to him physically as long as he didn't ask for anything else. It was her revenge.

He felt that if he couldn't have her in his arms again that second his life would have been worth nothing. But she was long gone, and she flying in a non-regulation spaceship with members of an underground racing league. His heart leapt into his throat, and without another thought he fled back to the airfield.

"Sir! Excuse me, sir! Where are those ships headed?"

"The ones that are boarding? I can't tell you that. Do you have permission to be on the airfield?"

"I'm a Starfleet Commander. Do you need to see my identification? I order you to tell me where that fleet is going!"

"Okay, sir, look, I don't know. As far as I know there are no Starfleet people on this station, so –"

"Bullshit! You know who's on this station and you know where they're going. Tell me or I'll destroy this whole operation. You've got Starfleet parts on half those ships, don't you? One look and my engineer will have you shut down." Chakotay was an inch from the young man's face. "Just try me if you think I'm joking," he snarled.

"Uh – look, I really don't know-"

"You have three seconds before I order a Starfleet investigation."

"Okay! Aurelius Prime. I – I think I heard Chief say something about Aurelius Prime."

Chakotay frowned. "Aurelius Prime? The neutron star?"

The young man licked his lips and bobbed his head. "Sure. It's a big deal these days."

"What's a big deal?"

"You know – trying to get as close to the atmosphere as possible. Whoever gets the tightest rotation without getting pulled in beats the record. Let me tell you, there have been some close calls – that's one mother of a star if you know what I mean!"

Chakotay was shaking. He gripped the man by his thin shoulders. "Are you telling me those people are orbiting a neutron star and trying to get themselves pulled into its gravitational field?"

"No, sir, you didn't understand me. They're not trying to get pulled in, they're just trying to get as close as possible to– "

"Stop the fleet. That is an illegal operation."

"In case you've forgotten, Starfleet sold us this little space station. What's illegal for you pansies isn't illegal for us. If you don't like it, the shuttle bay is that way."

"No government would authorize a suicide mission like this, private or not! You! You there!"

Chakotay sprinted toward the line of Apocrypha referees. There were five or six vessels boarding, and at this distance he couldn't tell which was hers.

"Stop that fleet!"

"Attention Apocrypha flyers! To your marks!"

The airfield was much bigger than it looked. He would never reach her in time.

"What seems to be the problem, sir?"

"I'm a Starfleet officer," he panted. "My Cap- a member of my crew is on one of those ships. You have to stop the race."  
"I'm afraid I can't do that, sir. They're about to take off."

"I told you, I'm a Starfleet-"

"Sir, this is Alpha Walker. Your uniform is no good here. I must insist you leave the runway immediately, you are causing a safety hazard."

Several armed guards appeared around Chakotay, forcing him from the runway and finally off the perimeter of the airfield.

"Kathryn!" he screamed. The fleet of Apocrypha ships took off through the bright tears in his eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

"I'm really not sure what to do about this. As far as I know, it's unprecedented."

Admiral Owen Paris leaned on his desk thoughtfully. "There isn't much I don't know about bad behavior," he said.

"Yes," said one of the men sitting across from him, "but this isn't just bad behavior. This is _Voyager._ We'll have an administrative scandal on our hands if her promotion goes through."

"I'm beginning to see that. What do you know about Apocrypha?"

"I know it's no place for a Starfleet Captain."

"So what do you want to do? Arrange a court martial? Take away her captaincy? That might be even more dangerous. She's become a local hero."

"Not local, Frank." The black-haired man at the far end of the room sniffed and rubbed his nose with a handkerchief. "Hm. The golden officer who fell from grace. It's classic. Even the best crack under pressure."

"I don't know," said Paris. "She's been under pressure before, certainly more than this. And I've always felt that she took her responsibilities to Starfleet very seriously. You think it's just a case of a good girl gone bad, I suppose?"

"I think you're in a better position to make that call."

"I'm not sure that my son and Captain Janeway have much in common. Anyway, compared to her he's an altar boy now."

The other man chuckled. "We'll see."

"What's _Voyager_'s status?"

"She's ready for her close-up. I think she'll be one of the biggest tourist attractions in history. She'll never fly again, though, not if I have anything to say about it."

"Out with the old, in with the new, eh?"

"Have you seen Admiral Gonzalez' latest blueprints?"

"No, but I heard it was a whiz kid from the Academy."

"Hopefully someone who minds his Ps and Qs. The Federation Starship _Gemini._ It's a brand new concept – twin warp core technology."

"All right, you've got me interested."

"Good! Nothing like a bit of new blood to lift the spirits."

"Patrick, don't we have a velocity game to settle?"

Owen Paris was soon left alone in the office, the fate of Kathryn Janeway hanging far outside his reach.

PAGE BREAK

"It's no good. I'm breaking orbit."

"Come on!" protested Cassandra. "That's the third time now. You have to blade the ship diagonally like I told you."

"Do you want to do it?"

"Don't give me that. Just turn around and do it again. Pick up speed. Give these assholes a run for their money."

"You know those are all Apocrypha racers out there."

"They're after the same thing we are."

"Which is?"

"A chance to do this – how can I say it – _internationally_?Yeah, that's right. There are a lot of people interested in Aurelius Prime, and most of them can't even say the word Apocrypha. We have our own version of foreign affairs, Admiral. You'll get used to it."

"How much do I want to know about this?"

Cassandra shrugged. "For now, just get us closer. We can talk later."

Kathryn felt the thrill of warp eight overtake her. But she was not at ease. Bio-neural circuitry; gel packs; photon torpedoes. _Iberia_ was almost a carbon copy of _Voyager_. It was not only illegal, but profoundly disturbing to her. The story of the ghost ship- it wasn't _Voyager, _it was _Iberia_. This shiphad been here all along, and would have existed even if _Voyager _had been destroyed. And she had, for so long, sat in a chair exactly like this one, looking through a view-screen at the unknown stars and planets of the Delta Quadrant. In back of her, Tuvok and Harry Kim. In front, Tom Paris. To her left, Chakotay. The only thing she could remember about him now was that she had had to get a new pair of racing gloves because he had taken hers off.

"Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Paris."

"Return fire."

"This is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship _Voyager._"

_Nous marchons la tete haute_

_Comme des petits soldats –_

What was the next line? The Doctor had certainly made her suffer through _Carmen _enough. _Nous marchons…_

No, it was no use, she couldn't remember. But she could remember _Voyager. _She was on the bridge, and Chakotay was still beside her. Of course, it was all over, but something of it remained, a memory burning before her eyes, as real as the physical world. She saw the black navigation screen, and an encrypted file almost escaped her notice.

"Wait, Chakotay. What was that?"

"What was what?"

"There. That transmission. Do you see it?"

"I see it, but I can't open it."

"Maybe it isn't a message at all."

"Maybe it's a-"

"_Yes, _Kathryn, _yes!_ That's it! Keep low… we're in! No one's gotten this close! Can you feel it?"

The sight of Aurelius Prime shook her from her thoughts. It was true. They were hundreds of yards from the rest of the fleet, trapped inside the star's orbit.

"I've lost control of the ship!"

"No – no, you haven't, it only feels that way! Let it go, Kathryn, you're doing just fine. Ride with it. Come on!"

"No. We have to get out of here!" Kathryn struggled with _Iberia_'s propulsion system. "Thrusters and attitude control are red-lighting. We're losing containment. We can't get any closer!"

She felt the pull of Aurelius Prime, enveloping her. It was a vision of everything she feared. The star drew nearer, a beautiful monster, and for a second she believed that she was free, that the walls of _Iberia_ would fall away and leave her suspended in space.

_Warning. Hull breach in thirty seconds._

Kathryn's breath grew shallow.

"I can get us out of here," she said. "If _Iberia _is really anything like _Voyager,_ I'll be able to break orbit. Just let me get to the main computer –"

A large hand clamped down on her wrist.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"What? Let me go. I have to break orbit. I must have not realized how close we had gotten before. I - We're headed for a hull breach."

"_We_ haven't finished our rotation." Cassandra growled. "No rotation, no match point. Get it?"

Kathryn tried to pull her arm away, but she couldn't. "I don't know if you understand what's going on –"

Then she looked into the other woman's eyes. Cassandra's long face was suddenly ugly. Her eyes drowned in shadows, her lips were frozen in a snarl. Slowly, Kathryn understood.

"This isn't about the race," she said. "Is it? _Is it?_ You want to die out here."

Cassandra laughed humorlessly. "You never did get it, Admiral. I should have known. You can take the girl out of Starfleet, but you can't take Starfleet –"

Beyond _Iberia'_s windows, Aurelius Prime beckoned. Kathryn was stunned to find herself here. How could it have happened? She remembered the press conference, and the irresistible impulse she had felt upon hearing the advertisement for Apocrypha. She hadn't thought to question it – but could she have somehow wanted a chance to do this? Did she, like this strange woman, want to die? Why else would she have been staring into the lethal glow of the quadrant's most powerful neutron star?

She thought of her life on _Voyager._ Perhaps it had left her hopelessly unprepared for reality. How she loathed the feel of gravity, weighing down on her body like a careless lover. Perhaps it ought to be the thing to kill her. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, she repeated. But this was different. This was the cruel light of the truth, telling her that her days and nights in outer space, surrounded by the scientific mysteries that sustained her, were at an end. She wasn't crazy. She had only loved _Voyager_ too much.

"That's right, Kathryn! We're almost there! You feel it now, can't you?"

No. No. She couldn't find her voice. Aurelius Prime was spinning nearer and nearer, silver jaws open to devour _Iberia._ If she died, she would never see her ship again.

With a great cry, she wrested her arm from Cassandra's iron grip. She ran to the con.

"What are you _doing_?"

_Hull breach. Life support system is offline._

"I'm getting us out of here. We're not going to die, whether you like it or not. Engage aft thrusters. Warp nine. I'm going to force the ship into retrograde. I'm hoping the synchroton radiation will be enough to get us out of orbit."

"It's stalling!"

"No – hang on. _Iberia,_ you can do this."

She could have sworn she heard Aurelius Prime, roaring like a lion.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

At approximately two hundred hours, the last of the Apocrypha racing ships landed in Walker's Airfield, badly damaged. Two women stepped out of the ship. The first did not look behind her as she made her way back to the Apocrypha administration building. The second, Kathryn Janeway, paused longer and finally turned toward the visitor docking port.

He was waiting for her when she arrived. He hadn't moved from the same spot in hours. Behind him was the fleet of visitor ships, including his own shuttlecraft. As she strode towards him, his breathing nearly stopped. He could barely see her. She was a shadow, but she was alive. Finally, the runway lights shone on her face.

She came very close to him, but she did not touch him, and he was careful to keep his arms at his sides.

"Chakotay-"

"I've got a shuttle back there," he said quickly. "I was hoping – that is, if you're not planning to stay-"

She sighed. Her cheeks were pale. "Chakotay, there's something… wrong… with me – I think. I don't quite know how to say it. But I think I'd better face up to it instead of running away."

He motioned for her to follow him. Without a word they boarded the shuttlecraft. When the green light came, their ship took off, and Alpha Walker faded into the distance.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Counselor Deanna Troi rose from her reclining chair and checked the time. She didn't like to admit it, but she was slightly nervous. She had certainly dealt with Captains and even Admirals before – but Starfleet had been scandalized by Kathryn Janeway's recent activities, and there was no easy way to tell someone that her promised promotion was as good as revoked. _I suppose I don't have to tell her,_ Troi thought to herself. _After all, it's not really any of my business. But she's bound to ask. That's probably all she wants to talk about. She's seen the way they look at her…_

It was, in Troi's opinion, a terrible shame. As quickly as Starfleet had mounted its search effort for _Voyager_, it had turned on the ship's Captain. She might have had a good reason for what she had done – although Troi couldn't imagine what that reason might be – but the verdict was in, and no amount of explaining could overturn it. Admiral Paris was very upset, and still on her side, but he was quite possibly the only one. There was even talk of her captaincy being in jeopardy.

Troi had always imagined Captain Janeway as a force to be reckoned with, formidable and imposing. But the small red-haired woman who walked into her office did not quite give that impression. She had very good bearing, but she looked drained of all her energy, as if some unseen pain had taken its toll. And there was something else about her, Troi thought – something she couldn't quite place.

"Captain Janeway."

"Thank you for seeing me, Counselor." It was only a glimmer of the authoritative voice that Troi was accustomed to hearing over broadcasts.

"It's my pleasure. Please, sit down. Tell me what I can help you with."

Captain Janeway pressed her lips together for a moment, as if deciding whether to stay or go. She made up her mind, and sat down quickly in the brown chair opposite Troi's.

"I – thank you. This is a little awkward for me. I've just come from Administration, and I've been learning that – well, of what transpired during my absence."

Troi nodded.

"It's not that I didn't expect it. I mean, I suppose I didn't exactly expect it, but if I had given it any thought I would have expected it. I'm very aware – too aware, I think, of how Starfleet operates. It's automatic, really. It's one of the things that happen to you when you command a ship. You finally put all the training into practice, and before you know it you're a walking, talking protocol guide. It's not always pleasant, but it stays with you even after…"

Troi smiled. "_Marchons sans faire de faute._"

Janeway stared at her. "What?"

"I'm sorry. I sensed that you were trying to remember something. That's from an opera, isn't it?"

"_Carmen._"

"_Nous marchons la tete haute –"_

"_Comme des petits soldats. Marchons sans faire de faute._ Yes. Yes, that's it, you're right."

"Like little soldiers, we march without making any mistakes."

There was a pause.

"Is that how you've been feeling about Starfleet?"

Captain Janeway looked down at the floor. "I don't know," she said, very quietly. "It's possible. I've done all kinds of things lately and I can't tell why. Counselor –" she raised her head "-I've never really seen anyone before, like this, but I didn't know what else to do."

"It's all right. You did the right thing."

"I feel that I've been suffering lately from some sort of anger," she said, "and it –has been affecting the performance of my duties as a Starfleet officer, or rather my judgment in general."

"I see," said Troi. "Do you have a sense of where this anger is coming from?

"I don't really know who I'm angry with, if that's what you mean. I think it might be with Starfleet – in the sense that being the Captain of a ship for so long has almost made me forget how to live in any other way. And in all honesty, I don't want to live another way – but I've brought _Voyager_ home now and I know I'm supposed to be grateful for that, and happy -"

Troi watched Captain Janeway's clear blue eyes, trying to understand what she saw reflected there.

"I'm supposed to, but I can't."

"Maybe it would help," said Troi, "if you stopped thinking about what you're supposed to do or feel."

"But isn't it strange that I can't feel what everyone else is feeling?"

"How do you know what everyone else is feeling? You're not a telepath, are you?"

Janeway laughed slightly. "About the farthest thing from it. I guess I assumed. My crew seems to be thriving. And it's right that they should be."

"Do you see yourself as very different from them?"

"I don't think I used to. But I do now. I've realized how little they know me, and how little I've let them know me. I didn't tell anyone when I left."

Troi chose her words carefully. "I understand that you spent some time on Alpha Walker."

"It's not what everyone thinks. I didn't do it to spite Starfleet or to jeopardize my career. I had to get off the planet," she said, her voice trembling. "I _had _to. It wasn't a choice. I can't live unless I can be in space. But then it got out of control. I wanted a thrill ride, but Apocrypha is much more than that. I nearly died. I was this close to letting go. I saw the star - I felt it. It was so powerful, and it was… almost a relief."

Troi searched her face. "Are you saying that you tried to kill yourself, Captain?"

Captain Janeway shook her head. "No, that's just it. I knew the mission was dangerous, but I never intended to get that far inside. I lost my concentration."

"Really."

She nodded. "Yes. I don't think anything like that has happened to me before, not while I was flying."

"What did happen?"

"I had a kind of a vision or daydream. I saw _Voyager_, and my first officer. We were having a conversation about an encrypted message."

"Was it a memory of a conversation you had in the past?"

"I don't think so. In fact, no, definitely not. The next thing I knew, we were trapped inside the orbit of Aurelius Prime."

"That's very interesting," said Troi. "Tell me, do you think about _Voyager_ often?"

"Every minute of every day. I can't stop. I've become obsessed – with _Voyager_, with flying, with gravity."

"Gravity."

"Yes. I have a tremendous fear of it. I hate it. The only time I can escape is when I'm in motion, preferably on board a ship, but I'll take anything these days. I ride the public transportation system for no reason at all. For hours. Just to escape it – to feel as if I'm fighting it. But it always wins. I'm so afraid…"

"Afraid…?"

"That I've gone crazy." Her voice was a whisper. "And that I've lost everything that matters to me."

Deanna Troi rested her chin in her hands. She could see very plainly that this woman was in pain, but was not altogether sure how to help her. "I think you need to give yourself some credit, Captain. Seven years is a long time. It's a long time to be in command of a ship, and a long time to be playing the same role in other people's lives, day in and day out. You've had a unique experience in Starfleet. For so many years, you defined yourself solely by the expectations you were fulfilling. You were a leader, but still in many ways a follower – weren't you?"

Janeway looked at her thoughtfully. "I could never express that," she said, "but it's true. I was following orders as much as I was giving them. I could feel Starfleet's presence every day. Sometimes it was a comfort, but it was a burden, too."

"And now you've finally completed your mission. You've done your duty, and it's on to the next one. Instead of being the fighter, you've got to be the proud winner, the retiree. Your ship is locked up and put on display, and so are you.

"Of course you want to get away from it, Captain. Of course you want to find for yourself who you are and what you want to be. After seven years in space, who can be happy on the ground?"

Captain Janeway could not speak. She closed her eyes. And then Troi knew. The answer, as was customary, came to her very abruptly. But once it had come, she was sure.

"What… do you think I ought to do about it?" Janeway said at length.

"I think you ought to find out what was behind that vision you experienced on the Apocrypha ship."

"You don't think it was just some sort of reaction to what I was doing? Stress, or something?"

"I see no reason to think it was. You tell me nothing like it has ever happened to you before, and as a starship Captain you're trained to keep your concentration even in times of high stress. I sense that your energy is very low, Captain, but that may be because someone is trying to communicate with you."

"I don't understand."

"I believe you may be going through a kind of transformation. A psychic experience."

Janeway's skeptical eyes darted from one end of the room to the other. Troi wanted to laugh.

"I know you aren't comfortable with that suggestion. It might be easier to think that you're under stress, or even that you're going crazy. Am I right?"

"I'm…"

"But try to see it from another perspective, just briefly. All of these intense emotions could be as you say a natural reaction of some sort. But what if there is something else behind them? Don't you owe it to yourself to find out? Don't you owe it to _Voyager_?"

Captain Janeway frowned. "The hidden transmission I saw? But it was just a daydream - an illusion."

"And one so powerful it led you directly into the orbit of a neutron star without even realizing it."

"I'm not sure I know what to say."

"I can tell that you've been resisting –you've been fighting against something for a very long time. Try to open your mind, Captain. Close your eyes. Can you put yourself back in that place, back aboard _Voyager_? Who is there with you? And what do you see?"


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

"What was it you said to her, exactly?"

"What I was told to say. That if she issued a public statement apologizing for her involvement with Apocrypha, Starfleet would reconsider its position."

"And she refused?"

"She refused. It's my fault, I suppose. I thought that Troi woman might be able to talk some sense into her. Clearly, I was mistaken."

"What does Paris have to say about all of this?"

The dark-haired Admiral grimaced. "Paris," he said, "is petitioning Starfleet to allow Captain Janeway access to _Voyager._"

"What?"

"That's right. As if the Apocrypha charade wasn't enough. Apparently she's got it into her head that there's some secret transmission in _Voyager_'s computer and she's demanding to board the ship."

"That's impossible, under the circumstances."

"Impossible for you or I or Captain Janeway? Yes. But not impossible for Owen Paris. He's pulling the strings."

"Why on Earth would he do that?"

"Maybe he's gone soft. Maybe he believes her. I don't know."

The Admirals sat in stony silence.

"Well, this can only end one way. If the petition fails, she's refused our offer and that's that. If Paris somehow gets her aboard _Voyager_, it will be all over the news and when she returns from her fruitless excursion it's possible that the general public will have lost some of its patience with her too."

"Sometimes you sound as if you're not sorry this happened."


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

It was too soon. At the very sight of _Voyager_, all the perspective she had reacquired deserted her. She could taste her five A.M. cup of coffee, ice cold. She felt turbulence. She felt the nerves, and the terrible effort of putting on a brave face when she was sure her heart would break. She half expected them all to be there, standing at attention, waiting for her on the bridge. Workers pushed aside the velvet ropes for her, and as she boarded the ship she could barely see inside it. Only one or two work lights shone. As if on cue, the maintenance crewmen rose when they saw her, acknowledged her presence, and scurried away. The gestures were respectful, but in the pit of her stomach she knew what they were thinking. _There goes _Voyager'_s Captain. She's gone crazy. She thinks there's something on the ship. She can't let go._

It was a miracle that Admiral Paris had gotten her inside, considering what Starfleet thought of her. But she didn't care about that. It gave her a bizarre pleasure to think of herself as a renegade. Apocrypha was a badge of honor. Cassandra probably felt betrayed; but the fact was that they had been to Aurelius Prime and back again. Kathryn had faced her fear. She hadn't conquered it, but she hadn't expected she would. That had not been the point.

It made her inexplicably angry to see museum ropes aboard her ship. She tried dismantling one of them. It toppled to the ground with a satisfying scraping sound. She wanted to tear the rope from its velvet enclosure. She wanted to perform an act of violence upon it. She ran a tired hand over her forehead. This was not why she had come.

She should have gone to the main computer, but could not do anything until she saw for herself what they had done to _Voyager._ The corridors were silent. The ship smelled of wet paint and computer parts, as if it were just being built, not retired. She knew that if she made a sound, it would echo strangely through the halls, and that she would feel unbearable loneliness.

Kathryn stared into the abyss that was the mess hall.

"Computer. Lights!"

It was a scene from a horrific fairy tale. Every table was littered with trays and mugs. In the center of the room stood a Starfleet officer. A hologram, phasing in and out of sight. Another, unfinished, stood only in his trousers.

What was next? _Who_ was next? Neelix, who she would never see again? Tuvok? Herself? Where would she be in all of this? Perhaps in the back, in the kitchen, having a talk with Neelix. Or perhaps the Janeway hologram was hidden somewhere else on the ship. Maybe there were hundreds, some look-alikes, some generic crewmen. An entire theatrical cast, waiting behind velvet ropes for the tourists to line up. _See the amazing Starship _Voyager._ See how it all began. Relive the adventure._

When she had gone to see Deanna Troi, it had been in a spirit of capitulation. She had felt weak, helpless, at the brink of despair. But this was war. She prayed that the silverware wasn't holographic. It wasn't. She threw things off the tables. She hurled them at the unfinished holograms. Several of the tables she turned over, others she kicked out of place. Was this what Troi had wanted her to see? She paused, and glanced around the room. If she went any further, if she smashed the furniture or broke a window, she would be breaking a part of _Voyager. _She thought of the black racing gloves Cassandra had given her. The mess hall was in shambles. It was only the holograms she couldn't destroy – not yet. Calmed by the sight of the ruins, she slowly released the chair she was holding. She breathed deeply. She hadn't noticed that she had been crying. She pushed her tears away with the back of her hand. They had no right to rob her _Voyager,_ and _Voyager_ of her own dignity.

The bridge, as far as she could tell, was as she had left it except that all of the workstations had been shut down to conserve energy. She did something she hadn't done in years. She powered up. Lights flooded the room, and she heard the soft whir of the computer system booting.

"All systems online."

She got to work. As she had expected, Starfleet's secretarial nature had prevailed, and the complete inventory of records was at her disposal. Her seven-year journey, encapsulated in a nearly endless string of transmissions, star charts, and field reports. As the images materialized, her emotions slowly deserted her. The fury, the indignation she had felt, disappeared in the string of digital downloads. She could pore over it all and feel nothing. She was a nameless detective, searching for something out of place in someone else's life. The computer lights shone in her eyes. She imagined that there might have been a great mystery here, something of an even larger scope than her adventures in the Delta Quadrant. The longer she searched, the more she wanted to believe in what Troi had told her. But now she could barely remember the vision she had experienced on the Apocrypha ship.

The hours passed. Outside, the maintenance workers finished their shifts and most left the space station. The Starfleet beacon lights with chrome reflectors began to revolve, as they did several times daily. Kathryn Janeway remained motionless on _Voyager_'s bridge, looking into her past.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

At twenty-two hundred hours, the Apocrypha fleet launched from Alpha Walker. It was the first official race to Aurelius Prime. Apocrypha's undisputed front-runner was the seasoned pilot Cassandra Weatherfield. She had many wins to her credit, and had been a member of the league for over a decade. If she were to complete this mission, it would be more than just a feather in Apocrypha's cap. It would mean international respect, access to top equipment, and all the other benefits of being the quadrant's leading racing club. From the ground, the chief administrators watched and waited.

The race took ten hours and forty-five minutes to conclude. One by one, individual ships pulled out of orbit, docking points from the clubs they represented. The results were calculated as they came in. At o-eight hundred hours and thirty minutes, the Great Warrior racing club was in the lead, their flyer having achieved a distance of just over thirty thousand kilometers from the giant star's surface.

Standing in Great Warrior's way was Apocrypha and Weatherfield. She was the only racer who had chosen to fly alone, and at o-eight hundred thirty, the only racer left in Aurelius' orbit. From within a small vessel her large hazel eyes, though seldom moving from their target, half traced the Great Warrior ship's movements as it flew out of range. She knew exactly what had happened. Hull fracture; warp core breach. It was not an unusual story.

She knew that if she stayed, the same fate would befall her own vessel. There was no point to empty boasts about Apocrypha's crackerjack engineers and pilfering of Starfleet parts. The Aurelius race was hopelessly premature, and everyone knew it. No one could keep it together, certainly not past thirty thousand. But in a matter of years, when all the ships were stronger and more secure, who would even want to try?

"Warning. Hull breach in sixty seconds."

"Apocrypha to all units. Who's still up there?"

"Very funny. I'm all you've got."

"What's your status, Weatherfield?"

"Hull breach. Sixty seconds."

"Can you hang on another minute and a half?"

"Do you even have to ask?"

"Once the breach happens, don't stay in more than thirty seconds. You saw what almost happened to our friends out there."

"Don't have to worry about me."

The breach happened. Aurelius tore at the ship's hull, disengaging it. The star was everywhere, rattling the windows and filling the ship with bitter cold. Still, Weatherfield pursued it. She dug her heels in deeper. The ship sped on.

"Twenty! I've got it!"

"Apocrypha to Weatherfield. Disengage your –"

The communication system gave its last burst of static. She was on her own. The wind roared in her hair. She was once again on a swing set in a park in her hometown, dangerously close to turning over the metal bar.

Aurelius Prime was a beautiful star. With a mass of over three times the solar mass and a radius of fifteen kilometers, it was easily one of the most powerful celestial bodies in the quadrant. To the human eye, it was an immaculate blue sphere radiating through space, a far purer blue than the ocean or the mid-evening sky, infinitely deep and lasting forever.

It was not that she was unduly distressed, or that she had little to live for. It was only that there was in her nature a certain perverse destructiveness that had made her eager as a child to trample down sandcastles she had built. She held firm, and flew unabashedly into the star until it devoured her, until she could see her own ship breaking apart before her eyes, which were now a brilliant blue, like the star.


	13. Chapter 13

Warning: sexual content

Warning: sexual content

Chapter Thirteen

Kathryn Janeway stood at her ready room window. She could see her reflection in it, the pale skin and the radiant blue of her eyes. She thought she looked like a china doll.

"I've watched you so many times, like this," she heard him say. She had taken off her Starfleet jacket, and wore only the sleeveless gray undershirt. Her hands were on the ledge, her arms wide apart, straight and stiff.

"What did you want to do?" There was a chill in her voice.

She almost did not want to believe that his touch would shake her from her calm composure, that his hands traveling firmly down her shoulders could take the breath from her lips. He entwined his hands with hers, and she felt his body standing rigidly behind her.

"Is that all?" she said.

"No." He lifted his hands, and wrapped them around her waist. He touched her stomach underneath the uniform. She leaned back against him.

"Is that all?"

"No."

She didn't think it could happen so fast. His hands forced past the fabric of her underclothes, and his fingers were inside her. She screamed. There was a crowd on the bridge; maybe the ship had been boarded. Maybe the cold metal barrel of a Cardassian rifle awaited her on the other side of the door. But she couldn't breathe. His touch deepened, and she pushed violently against him. She searched for him. His body was a rock, but she was lost without him. She fought for consciousness.

And yet, she was motionless, watching the mournful maintenance workers resume their duties. Her imagination could take her so far and no farther. There was no mystery here, at least not anymore. She had combed through every record, searched every database for the key to her unrest, but it had come to nothing. There was no Chakotay; no _Voyager- _only a museum.

It was an enchanting prison, and one she almost felt she could remain in forever. There was no rationality to force her away from it. But even as she rebuilt her sanctuary, her ghost-ship, there was a destructive force still inside her, begging her to tear it all down. She had never before felt such an intimate connection between her sexual and aggressive impulses. She wanted, above all else, to dominate Chakotay, to possess him, but the sensation made her deeply uneasy. There was in fact, at that moment, something in her that wanted to destroy _Voyager._ It was as if she could see her vulnerable self reflected before her, and she felt no mercy. She wanted to torture herself as the years had tortured her, perhaps to lay claim on her own suffering.

She moved to the gray sofa and lay down. She felt all her muscles, heavy and tired. There was no doubt that the Delta Quadrant had left her weakened, yet her body was still young. It was still beautiful. She was not a particularly vain person, but she was also not under any illusions. Her friends may have thought that it was painful for her to see Chakotay and Seven together, that she was insecure because he had chosen a younger woman. This was not the case. She knew beyond the shadow of a doubt how much Chakotay wanted her sexually, and that no one, young or old, could make him want her any less. She did not understand insecurity of that nature. Nor had she set out to torture him that day at Alpha Walker, but in the end she couldn't help herself. She needed to express to him that he had been not cruel for refusing to wait for her, but weak – that in some profound sense he was afraid of her. She had to lord it over him, to make him sweat it out until he admitted it. In retrospect there was probably nothing he could have said that would have satisfied her. And yet she could still feel his touch, coursing through her like a hurricane, repeating itself, driving her to insanity. She had not allowed him to make love to her, but really it had been he who had not allowed it. If she had told him the truth, if she had let the words escape from her lips, then he would have given himself to her. But he wasn't to have that victory. She wanted to take him at his most vulnerable, when he wasn't even sure he would ever see her again. She wanted to feel him when he was desperate, and when she was an ice sculpture or a china doll – implacable, unmovable. She wanted to see if he could reach her.

"Hey."

"What is it?"

Ensign Davis pointed to the gangplank. "There she comes."

"Looks like death row, doesn't it?"

"Here you are, ma'am."

"Thank you."

Kathryn stared into the windows of her shuttlecraft. She saw _Voyager_'s reflection, bright and beautiful as she had always been, but far away and so much smaller.

"Ma'am? Is anything wrong?"

Smaller. That was it.

Kathryn boarded the shuttlecraft.

"Have a good night, ma'am."

She hadn't been wrong – not about what really mattered. The ghost-ship wasn't _Voyager._ It was _Iberia._


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

"I'm sorry to have to take up your time, Commander Chakotay, but this is a matter of some importance. You are aware, I'm sure, of Starfleet's concern regarding Captain Janeway's status."

"I don't understand."

"Her status, pending of course, as a Fleet Admiral, and her status as a ranking officer. We are concerned that she may not be fit for active duty at the present time, that her recent actions are not those befitting a Fleet Admiral, a Captain, or any member of Starfleet."

"What is your opinion of Captain Janeway, Commander?"

"My opinion of her is that she is one of the finest officers in the history of Starfleet. It has been my honor to serve with her, and I have no reason not to endorse her promotion wholeheartedly."

"And what is the nature of your relationship now?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Have you kept in contact with Captain Janeway since _Voyager_'s return?"

"Yes."

"Then you know of her recent involvement with the Alpha Walker space station."

"Yes."

"And of her recent visit to _Voyager._"

"Yes. But I was unaware of that being relevant to her promotion."

"Captain Janeway seems to be convinced that there are or were hidden documents in _Voyager'_s computer, apparently related to a psychic premonition she experienced while aboard a non-regulation ship called _Iberia._ Have you ever known Captain Janeway to have psychic abilities?"

"No, I wouldn't say that I have."

"Then does it not strike you as odd that she returned to _Voyager_ under those circumstances?"

"Yes, it does. But Counselor Troi - "

"Counselor Troi's opinion on the matter has been duly noted. However, it would seem to be a moot point, considering that no documents out of the ordinary were recovered by Captain Janeway during her return."

"Commander, you of all people must appreciate the seriousness of promoting or even retaining an officer who is clearly mentally unstable."

"I appreciate that this entire investigation is an unwarranted attack on Captain Janeway's character."

"I caution you on your choice of words."

"And I caution you that the longer you pursue this line of questioning, the further you will alienate the crew of _Voyager_ and the hundreds of other officers who support Captain Janeway. I don't know what's going on here. I don't think I want to know. But my participation ends – right here."

Chakotay turned on his heel and walked out of the boardroom. What he loathed about Starfleet's sliding doors was their inability to slam. But he was satisfied with his statement, and almost completely apathetic about its consequences. No matter what he had been through with Starfleet, it would never own him. He could not understand those officers whose identities were so tied up with the organization that they couldn't bring themselves to utter a word against it. And he was secretly proud that Captain Janeway, for all her formality and knowledge of protocol, was not one of those officers.

He met her outside the administration building. She looked flushed and her face was anxious. "What happened?"

He shook his head. "Nothing good. Kathryn, this has gone far enough. Whatever you did at Alpha Walker – whatever happened – someone at Starfleet has it in for you. I'm telling you, it doesn't make any sense. I'm almost starting to think that this was set up from the beginning."

She laughed. "Is that your Maquis paranoia talking?"

He shook his head again. "This isn't a joke. You don't know what they were saying in there. Look – if I were you, I would just make an appointment and deal. Find out what they want. Okay?"

"Chakotay, I can't do that right now."

"You – what do you mean, you can't do that right now? This is your entire career we're talking about!"

"Yes, but I have to go back to Alpha Walker. In fact, I need you to come with me."

For a moment, he completely believed the Admirals' talk about her mental instability.

"You can't possibly mean that."

She stared him dead in the eye. "Chakotay, when I was at Alpha Walker_,_ I saw something. I thought that it involved _Voyager_, but then I realized that what I was looking for was aboard the _Iberia _all along. And you were with me. You were there, with me, on the ship, in my vision, and I can't go back without you. You have to help me find it."

Her eyes pleaded with him. He searched her face, wishing that he could find some sign that she was crazy. She looked quite possibly more exhausted than he had ever seen her, but that was all.

"Are you going to stay here and let those bureaucrats convince you I'm out of my mind, or are you going to believe what I'm telling you and help me? You said it yourself – they're not on my side. Clearly I need all the help I can get. Are you with me or not?"

Chakotay sighed. What choice did he have? She was still his Captain.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

The Apocrypha flag, a black bow and arrow on a white background, flew at half-mast over the airfield. All of Alpha Walker was dark, and the fleet of ships motionless on the dock. In the station house one grey-haired administrator sat, peering in the lamplight at two Starfleet officers. He watched their long strides as they approached him, and thought he could hear, although it was half imagined, the rhythmic crackle of their stiff uniforms. He was instantly on guard.

"What can I do for you?"

"I'm sorry to bother you," said the woman. Her hair was wispy and bright red, and her voice was sharp. "I need to speak to one of your pilots. Cassandra Weatherfied."

"Cassandra Weatherfield," he repeated softly.

"Yes. She's a friend of mine, and I –"

"A friend?"

He looked suspiciously into the woman's face, her pink lips and intelligent blue eyes. He thought about his own father, A Starfleet officer himself. The expression, somehow, was similar. Intelligence. Entitlement. Condescension.

"I don't think so, ma'am."

The eyes widened. "I beg your pardon?"

He smiled faintly. "If you've come to shut us down you'll have to wait until morning, I'm afraid. I'm the only one here and our commanding officer won't be in until o-six hundred hours. You're welcome to wait. But if you were any kind of friend of Cassandra's, you would know that she died over a week ago in the race to Aurelius Prime. You may have noticed the flag."

The woman, visibly upset, looked across the airfield. He watched the quick turn of her eyes, a frown creasing her face. He was running out of patience.

"All right. What is this about? Have you finally found something legitimate to charge us with? Have you come to take our ships to the yard? I'll call security if I have to, Officer, but please don't do an injustice to Cassandra's memory."

"You don't understand," she said quickly. The man beside her had still not said a word. "I do – that is, I did know Cassandra. We flew together on the _Iberia._ Maybe she mentioned me. My name is Kathryn Janeway."

"Janeway." He drew his glasses up along his nose to get a better look. So this was the infamous Starfleet Captain who had thrown it all away. "You did the qualifying round."

"That's right."

"What happened? Lose your nerve?" He stole a sidelong glance at the man beside her. "Aurelius too big and bright for you?"

She stiffened. "Maybe so," she said, "but it doesn't matter now. Cassandra is gone and so is _Iberia._ It's too late."

She motioned to her partner and began to walk away.

"Just a minute! You wanted to see Cassandra about _Iberia_?"

"Yes. I needed to re-board the ship, but obviously that can't happen. I'm sorry to have wasted your time."

"Have you changed your attitude since the Aurelius race, Ms. Janeway?"

"Excuse me?"

"Who are you really working for, Captain? Starfleet counterintelligence?"

She turned to face him and leaned forward. He had not liked her appearance at first, but in anger he thought she looked rather striking.

"It would be an injustice," she said, "to Cassandra's memory to accuse me. She was my racing partner. We had our differences, and I'm not going to defend my past to you. But I risked my life out there, sir. For better or worse, I survived."

The last words were said almost in a whisper.

He shouted after her. "_Iberia _is still on the station."

"How can that be? It was her ship."

"She didn't take it to Aurelius. She made a last-minute decision to take the _Islander_. If you want to see _Iberia _I'll take you."

Wordlessly, the woman removed her com badge, tricorder and weapon and motioned for her partner to do the same.

"Let's go."


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

"So now what? Do we stand here and wait for the apparition?"

She glared at him. "We're lucky we even got here. Did you see how suspicious he was?"

Chakotay glanced outside to see if the desk officer was still watching them. He wasn't. "Do you blame him? What _would _the Captain of _Voyager_ want with Apocrypha? It's actually a question I've been asking myself."

"Are you going to help me?"

"We've checked the ship's log. What else do you want me to do?"

"I know there's something here. There has to be."

"Kathryn – "

"Wait," she said. "Now I remember. It wouldn't be in the ship's log. You have to check the navigation system. I need you to pull up star charts on all of _Iberia's_ recent locations."

"Wait, Chakotay. What was that?"

"What was what?"

"There. That transmission. Do you see it?"

It was, he was sure, a corrupted file in the navigation log.

"I see it, but I can't open it."

"Maybe it isn't a message at all."

He had never known her to be so unreasonable. "Maybe it's a-"

He had been planning a caustic remark, but stopped when he saw the look on her face. "What is it?"

She walked away from the console.

"This conversation," she said. "We've had it before. This is the conversation we had in my vision. That file is what I've been looking for."

He bit his lip. "Kathryn." There was something uncannily wrong about this ship. The walls, the plasma conduits, every console and every computer screen had the look and the feel of _Voyager._ It did not bother him particularly that the parts for this ship had most likely been stolen, or that the blueprint certainly had been. He should have been outraged and on the com system to Starfleet headquarters, but it was the furthest thing from his mind. The last seven years, having congealed into a vague pang of anxiety, were as present on this ship as they would have been on the genuine article. He felt as if he were looking at _Voyager _through a fun-house mirror – and himself, as much a shriveled relic as the ship, begging his Captain to listen to reason.

"Look. I know what you think. You think I've lost my mind and that all those people are right about me. Don't you? It's all right, you can say it. But that doesn't change what's really going on here. This is not an error message. It's something else."

"We have the same decryption protocols here that we did on _Voyager_, and I still can't read this."

"Let me see it."

"There's nothing to see. It's a cluster of pixels."

She paused. "Can you magnify it?"

"I think so..."

"Look at this. Look at what's happening. Do you see this?"

He said nothing.

"You can see it, can't you? It isn't a written transmission. It's a map."

He could see it quite clearly. But admitting it was another matter entirely. She looked up at him, her eyes full of what he would have in past years called hope, but what he could now only describe as mania. Her whole face shone. But all those times when there really was an anomaly to chase or a new world to explore were long gone.

"I've heard of this place."

"What is it?"

"It's a small region that borders on two Federation zones, all but off limits to Federation vessels."

"All right. So you've found it. What are you going to do?"

She blinked. He was always fascinated when she did that. There was something in the movement of her eyes that he found extraordinary.

"I should think that would be obvious enough. I'm going to follow the map."

"Do you hear yourself? You don't even know anything about this place. For all you know it's some kind of trap Apocrypha plants for Starfleet officers."

"That's ridiculous."

"Do you have a better idea?"

"I knew this map was here. It's been in my mind for weeks. I'm starting to think it was why I was drawn to Apocrypha. You can't tell me to stop now that I've come so far."

"Come so far to do what? You're acting like you're still on a mission. But let me tell you, if the Admirals upstairs have their way you –"

"You think I don't know what they're saying. You think I've been living in my own world, but I'm well aware. What you don't understand is that I've left it all behind – the Admirals upstairs and all the rest of it."

"I'm beginning to see that. What I don't understand is why."

"People change. You'll have to accept that."

"Not that much!" He wanted to shake her. _Maybe I don't know as much about you as I thought, but one thing I do know with all my heart is that you aren't psychic._

She stared him down for a few seconds. "I see. So it's true, then. You think I've lost my mind. You think this is some delusion. I can't believe you would doubt me after all these years."

He looked down. "The truth is that I don't know what to think. You almost died aboard this ship and now you want to take it into a minefield for no rhyme or reason – what are you looking for? Or looking to get away from?"

He prayed, with all his irrational feeling, that she would say "You. I'm looking to get away from you because I'm still in love with you."

For a split second, he felt as if she really could read his mind. Her lips parted and she moved closer, drawing in her breath.

"Gravity," she said.

"What?"

She sighed. "It's difficult to explain. But ever since I returned from _Voyager_, I haven't been able to think about anything else but leaving Earth. And I feel that I've been changing. Maybe it's all for the worse, but I did know that I would find this map here. I knew there was a deeper reason for my involvement with Apocrypha. I had to believe that I wanted something other than to escape, or to kill myself."

He could barely understand what he was hearing. "Kill yourself? How could you think of that? It's crazy!"

She said nothing. She was one of the few people he had known who never spoke for the sake of continuing a conversation. Maybe she thought of it as a Captain's prerogative. His only thought was that if she had died he would have followed her.

Aloud he said, "Have you had any other visions like this one? Anything you saw or imagined that came true, or that you have reason to believe will come true?"

She blushed furiously at that, although he had no idea why. Then the corner of her mouth turned up in the wry smile he dreaded. "I don't know. Maybe I am crazy, Chakotay. But this ship ison a mission, and right now I'm the only pilot she's got." Serious again, almost patronizing. "I have to go. You understand, don't you?"

He took hold of her shoulders. "No. I can't let you do this."

"Let me?" She twisted under his grasp.

"Kathryn, just listen to me. You can get help. Whatever it is that's happening to you, we can fix it."

"You'd like me to be fixed and just as good as new. Not like this."

"I wouldn't care if you were a raving lunatic if you would just stay-"

"I can't stay." Her voice was low, deadly quiet, and close to breaking. "I can't stay," she repeated.

_This is how I know,_ he told her silently_. If you were psychic enough to see how much pain you're causing me I don't think you would do it, Kathryn._

It was then that the inclination to physically prevent her nearly overtook him. He could picture himself forcing her away from the ship until she couldn't see it anymore, until she could forget it altogether. Couldn't he make her forget? Didn't his touch mean anything to her now?

Instead he released her shoulders. He slammed his fist against the wall and leaned there, afraid to move.

If his outburst had affected her, she didn't show it. At long last, she said, "I thought I was the one who showed you the meaning of peace… The Angry Warrior, remember?"

He turned his head briefly in her direction, just before he descended.

"That was a long time ago."


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

_Jamais Carmen ne cedera! Libre elle est nee_

_Et libre elle mourra._

I will never give in! I was born free, and free I will die.

It was most likely all for the best. Alone with her ship, she was at peace. She did not take it as a good sign that Chakotay had wanted her to stay. If he refused to share her with the final frontier, then he could not have her at all. She had no patience for a man who wanted her all to himself.

And yet she knew that this voyage of hers had very little to do with him. She was not sure that she believed Deanna Troi, but all of a sudden she very much wanted to. Incomprehensibly, the idea of being psychic struck her as exceptionally appealing when in the past it had held no interest at all. Still the question plagued her, as _Iberia_ raced through the Federation border – was anything of her old life salvageable? It seemed clear that the affinity between herself and Starfleet was gone, and yet she felt that she had to leave Federation space in order to stand alone. Everything she had once valued was growing dim, but she couldn't understand why, any more than she could understand her hatred of solid ground after seven years of trying desperately to reach it.

She spent four solitary days of travel, not speaking a word aloud or writing a transmission to anyone. She piloted her ship in meditation, believing that the destination on her map was one of supreme importance. At times she felt as if she was flying slowly, at other moments she could not catch her breath.

She reached it in daylight on the fifth day, a small Class G planet in a solar system located between the borders of two Federation zones. She sent a hail, but received no response. There were no other ships in the vicinity, no space station near the planet. She fell into orbit and was not detected, lowering the ship until she had a bird's eye view of the surface. Hundreds of overturned buildings, beaten into the ground or collapsed on mountains of rubble, land vehicles torn apart. She noticed a movement that at first struck her as dirt falling into massive landfills. But as she moved in closer she began to see creatures near the landfills. They were filling the craters, but not with dirt.

She gasped in horror. Something in her wanted to turn the ship around, but the crowd was gesturing upwards, pointing to the sky. She had been detected. At once, the group dropped their shovels and ran for cover, disappearing behind the landfills. By the time she scouted out a location and landed _Iberia,_ the entire area was deserted.

She shut down _Iberia's _engines. Cautiously, she took out her weapon and stepped out of the ship. The smell in the air was filthy; smoke from a bomb or old fashioned gunfire; thousands of bodies, lying uncovered in mass graves, decomposing in the sun. She had no doubt that she had entered a war zone, but the bodies in the landfills were in such a condition that she could not even hazard a guess as to what species they belonged to. Considering that the zone was outside Federation space, there was no reason to think that the species was known to the Federation at all. She wanted to wait until the smoke cleared before searching for the survivors, but it continued to hang on the field, diffusing the sunlight. It was no use. She set off. The clearing was long behind the gravesite, and it was several miles before she reached shelter, a shallow cave built from fallen rocks. She could hear Chakotay's voice in her ear. _Drop your weapon. Leave it behind. They are afraid of you and you need to build their trust._ Her hand rested briefly on her phaser rifle and she looked back toward _Iberia._ She drew in her breath. "Well, Cassandra, you were right. You can take the girl out of Starfleet, but you can't take Starfleet out of the girl."

The cave was silent, but there were physical traces of life on the floor, medical supplies and something that looked like a communication device, possibly a short-wave radio. She shone her flashlight slowly along the cave wall. She saw a flash of movement, and advanced. There was a scuffle, and she felt someone push against her, but she held on. She had the creature by one of his limbs, and forced him back against the wall. The light shone on his face. He was thin, barely more than a skeleton, and his face was covered in blood and dirt. But he was human.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

"So what you're asking me is whether there is any way someone could develop psychic abilities unnaturally."

Chakotay could tell by Counselor Troi's expression that she was unimpressed.

She sighed audibly. "I'm sensing that it's very hard for you to accept this transformation in Captain Janeway. Would you like to talk about why that might be?"

Chakotay ran a hand through his hair. "I know what this sounds like," he said, "but you don't know Captain Janeway the way I do."

"Of course that's true Commander," she said, and he had the distinct impression she was trying to placate him. "I know that you worked closely with her for many years and have an appreciation of her character that even members of her own family might not have. But people do change. It's one of the more fortunate aspects of human nature. Don't you think life would be a bit boring if everyone stayed the same?"

"Counselor Troi, I don't exactly know how to say this," he said, "but Captain Janeway _isn't psychic._ What I mean to say is that when people change – and I agree that they do change – they usually develop some part of themselves that was there to some extent to begin with. There are some things that are fundamental to a person, that define a person. Wouldn't you say?"

"Are you saying that Captain Janeway's lack of psychic ability is one of her defining characteristics?"

"Well – yes, frankly, I am. You have to understand that I have all the respect in the world for her, but Captain Janeway has in my opinion always had remarkably bad intuition."

"Really."

"Yes."

"What kind of intuition?"

"Pardon me?"

"There are many kinds of intuition, Commander. Scientific, political, personal, spiritual. It might be that you have had one kind of experience with Captain Janeway in your own relationship with her, but that can't speak to all the areas of her experience. All of the decisions she has made in her career, all of the risks she has taken, were probably based at least in part on intuition. And she did bring _Voyager_ back from the Delta Quadrant."

Chakotay lowered his head. "I didn't mean to say that she – that I –"

"I know you didn't, Commander. I'm sensing that you're very frustrated, and that frustration may be clouding your judgment now."

He was silent.

"But I'm not going to convince you of that, am I? I'm sure this has been difficult for you. And I understand that Captain Janeway's recent actions may be significantly affecting her career."

"_May _be affecting it? There seems to be nothing less than a conspiracy against her. And there isn't anything I can do to stop it because she keeps taking actions that could legitimately cost her everything. There are people in Starfleet who want her gone, and I don't know why – but they will get their wish, and soon, unless she turns that ship around."

"But isn't that her decision to make?"

"I – "

"You want to protect her. You want her to do the right thing. But maybe it's not the right thing for her."

Chakotay closed his eyes momentarily, feeling that he could never get his point across.

"If you love someone, sometimes you have to set them free."

His eyes opened. "I never told you that."

"Captain Janeway may or may not have good intuition," Counselor Troi said, smiling, "but mine has rarely been called into question."

Had it always been so obvious? He told himself that the woman sitting across from him, dark haired and complacent, was a gifted psychic and that was the only reason she had known. He wanted so badly to deny it – to announce to the world that he was not in love with a woman who wanted nothing more than to be light years away from him and from planet Earth altogether. But it was no use.

"Well, that's why I need to keep trying," he said, meeting her eyes. "I need to find out what's behind all of this. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe that will come clear in the end, but I can't deny what I know about her. She is committed to Starfleet and I know that she would never turn her back on it. So I'm asking you – whether you believe it or whether you don't – might there be any explanation for her vision about the map, other than that she has simply developed psychic abilities on her own?"

PAGE BREAK

At exactly o-sixteen-hundred hours, Seven of Nine walked through the doors to a lavish office inside the Starfleet main administration building. Three men were already in the room. One had white hair and a wide-set jaw. The man to his left had a long, wizened face and a few gray wisps covering his forehead. The third man was black-haired and stocky, a thick black moustache obscuring much of his face.

"Welcome, Seven of Nine," said the white-haired man, extending his hand. "Thank you for coming. Please, have a seat."

"I prefer to stand," she said in her customary way.

"Very well. Do you have any idea why we have asked you to meet with us?"

"I don't, sir."

The thin gray-haired man grimaced in a way that somewhat resembled a smile. "I trust you will be pleasantly surprised."

She raised an eyebrow. "That remains to be seen, sir."

The thick-set man advanced toward her clumsily, carrying a small felt case. "After much consideration," he said, "of your record and career, we have decided to make you an offer."

"An offer, sir."

"Take it," he said.

She accepted the case, and opened it.

"I don't understand."

The white-haired man said, "I would have thought it would be rather obvious. We are offering you a promotion to the rank of Captain."


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

"You've got to be kidding me."

"B'Elanna, you were the only one I could think of to ask."

"Did you think of the Doctor?"

"What would he know about things like this?"

"He'd have to know more than I would! You really think that I have inside information on a miracle drug that turns people into psychics? Chakotay, if I didn't know better I would say you'd lost it. What makes you think that anything like this even exists?"

"There has got to be someone around here we can talk to. Didn't you say you knew people who were involved with Apocrypha?"

"Apocrypha? I thought that was all over."

"You told me you went to a bar one time, and you overheard a conversation –"

"Chakotay, I hate to break this to you, but I don't actually spend all of my free time socializing with the corrupt and the disenfranchised."

"That's not what I meant. But if you could just take me to that place –"

"Why on Earth do you want to go there? What is this all about?"

"How crazy do you want me to sound?"

She considered. "You want me to stop asking questions – I can see that. But Captain Janeway is my friend too, and if there's something going on I deserve to know about it. No matter how crazy it sounds or how crazy it is."

He was not at all sure why, but the knowledge that San Francisco's very worst area, ripe with the smell of overturned trash and the cheapest varieties of Klingon and Ferengi intoxicants, had not improved at all in the past decade gave him an immense amount of comfort. He had perhaps forgotten that the world Captain Janeway had

chosen to inhabit was much better known to him, and that he was therefore better equipped to navigate in it. Her rebellion, after all, was no more controversial than the old life he had shared with B'Elanna and Seska and all of his former compatriots - the only difference was that the cause they championed always seemed to make sense.

He scanned the musty room into which B'Elanna had grudgingly led him, trying at the same time to catch fragments of conversation. In a far corner, clutching a long-necked bottle, was a tall blond woman, very thin, with somewhat large eyes and black cutoff gloves on each of her hands.

"B'Elanna," he whispered. "She's from Apocrypha."

B'Elanna wrinkled her nose. "She's from Apocrypha. Like it's a hometown. Like Kansas. I happen to think she's from Union City."

"I'm not joking. Do you see her hands?"

"What about them?"

"Those are the same racing gloves Captain Janeway was wearing on Alpha Walker."

"Can I help you?"

"Two club sodas. Chakotay, sit down for crying out loud. You never even told me what happened between the two of you."

He flushed, and looked away. "We had an argument."

"About the race?"

"When she came back, she said she knew something was wrong, that she was going to get help. And then Deanna Troi convinced her she had had some kind of psychic breakthrough."

"A hypothesis you lend no credence to whatsoever."

"You believe it?"

"I don't know. I don't know if I believe it or not. I'd rather believe that than think she's been drugged."

"Well, I don't want to think it either."

"So she ended up by following a map that was embedded in a ship's navigation system? Do you have any idea where it leads?"

"None."

"Why would there have been a map hidden in the navigation system of that ship anyway? Do you think it had something to do with Apocrypha?"

"I can't think of anything else. _Iberia_ was built on Alpha Walker. Still – it doesn't make sense. _Iberia_ is the same type of vessel as _Voyager, _only smaller and less powerful. It can't be much of a secret that Apocrypha got their hands on the design specifications for _Voyager_ and most likely stole most of the ship's components from Starfleet."

"Chakotay, this can't be a coincidence."

"I agree that it can't. But it almost gives me more reason to think that Captain Janeway is a victim."

"A victim of what? And for what purpose?"

"You didn't hear the way those Admirals were talking about her."

"I can't see any reason why Starfleet would want to set her up; give her some kind of hallucinogen or ESP inducer and then claim she's unfit to serve? Why? What could possibly be in it for them?"

He simply had no answers, and going over it in his mind over and over again was doing nothing to calm his nerves. "I should have been more careful," he said. "While I was on Alpha Walker – I should have asked more questions."

B'Elanna cast him a sidelong glance. "Maybe now you'll get your chance."

"What do you mean?"

She gestured briefly to the corner. The blonde woman had risen from her chair and, bottle in hand, was walking in their direction. She gave Chakotay a pointed look and then retreated behind the metal door.

"What was that about?"

"I guess she wants your company," said B'Elanna, obviously amused.

"You see? What did I tell you?"

B'Elanna laughed. "Dream on. She wants a date, Chakotay."

Ignoring this, he rose and followed the woman. He found her alone in the back of the bar, looking steadily up at him. He did not get the impression that she was looking for a date. The walls were bare but for a frayed dart board and low music filtered through the walls.

"Are you going to sit down?"

He looked at her closely. The right side of her face, he noticed, was quite badly scarred. He had the distinct impression of having seen her before.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I know what you're looking for." The voice was low and almost masculine. "I can get it for you."

He sat down across from her at the round table.

"Psychic Sisters," said the woman, and she grinned, one side of her mouth stretching farther than the other. "That's your drug of choice, isn't it? It has its medical functions, but I hear most people prefer it for its recreational uses."

"I'm not sure that I get your meaning."

She leaned back in her chair. She pulled her black gloves more tightly around her hands. "Do you wonder why Kathryn did it? Maybe she did it to get high, at first, but you don't know how this stuff can get a hold of you. Imagine being inside someone's mind – feeling what she feels, tasting what she tastes, wanting what she wants. There is nothing in the world more exciting, Commander. At least that's what they say; I never touch it. Or maybe you're right and they gave it to her. Maybe they wanted to control her. I guess I wouldn't mind having someone like that under my control – so stubborn, otherwise. Have you ever wanted to control her, Commander? Have you ever, just for a second, wanted to make her feel what you feel?" She leered at him with cold, upturned eyes.

"No," he said. "And you've got five seconds to tell me what this is all about or –"

She rose, slamming the bottle on the table between them. Her face was close to him now, so that he could see the deep gashes in her cheek, smell the alcohol on her breath.

"You still don't get it, do you? Apocrypha is a front. Don't you think Starfleet would have shut that place down years ago if they hadn't wanted it to exist? It's amazing what perfectly intelligent people will believe. No, you can stay here poking around Administration if you want to but everything you're looking for is back on Alpha Walker. Unless, of course, it's already been destroyed."

"Chakotay!"

He was startled by the sound of B'Elanna's voice. "What is it?"

Her face was ashen. "Owen Paris is in a coma. They said he's been poisoned."

PAGE BREAK

"You are human."

The man stared at her with huge black eyes. He shook his head.

Her hand traveled further down his arm, although her eyes did not leave his. She felt his skin, warm and unmistakably human. Then she felt the sharp chill of a metal implant. Instinctively, she withdrew.

"Borg."

Again he shook his head. She began to see them coming out of the woodwork, human hands sheathed in that silver mold she knew so well, lining their eyes, protruding from their faces like silver wounds.

She thought, _this is the end. What I've come here for – my death wish._

She looked again at her captor. "You're going to assimilate me into the collective."

"It is you who have come to destroy us," said a voice from the cave wall. "We are incapable of destroying you."

She searched with her flashlight until she found the source of these words, a young girl whose left eye was partially obscured by a Borg implant.

Kathryn wanted to laugh, although she hardly knew why. "Judging from experience, I wouldn't say incapable."

"We are not Borg. You should know. Your government created us, and now you are destroying us. Your experiment failed."

"What experiment?"

The girl stepped away from the cave wall and began to walk among them, hands behind her back.

"The ultimate Starfleet officer," she snapped. "Borg collectivity and human innovation combined. We are a genetic prototype, a synthesis of human and Borg biological material. Unfortunately, we are flawed. The first prototype was also flawed. She was strong, but could not be controlled. We can be controlled, but cannot withstand an offensive attack. This is why you are destroying us, and replacing us with the new prototype."

"The new prototype."

"She was our hope for survival, but she did not respond to our message. A human female, assimilated by the Borg in childhood, later severed from the collective and returned to a Starfleet vessel called_ Voyager._ We attempted to intercept her, but now it is too late. She will become the new prototype.

"For years, your government has been involved in a project to replicate and utilize Borg material for the advancement of humanity. We are the culmination of this work, but we will soon cease to exist. When we saw your vessel, we assumed that you were sent to terminate us, as your government has terminated the others."


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

During Chakotay's visit, Owen Paris had woken up briefly and after five or six minutes slipped away again. He had not regained consciousness since. Chakotay could not imagine that his conduct during their interaction had done anything to help Paris' condition; but he had learned from the attending physician that the apparent cause of the illness was a toxin of unknown origins. This knowledge so incensed him that at the first flutter of Paris' eyelashes he had gripped the poor man by his shoulders and demanded he confess to taking the Psychic Sisters drug and administering it to Captain Janeway.

"Chakotay, what are you doing!"

"He knows what I'm talking about. Say it, Admiral. Psychic Sisters. You took it, and you forced her to take it. Didn't you!"

At this, the feeble head had moved back and forth in assent.

"What does that mean? What is Psychic Sisters?"

"When did you do it? When _Voyager_ landed, at her physical evaluation? Did you fill a hypospray with it and slip it by the doctors, or were they all in on it too? When did you do it, Admiral?"

"I… had no other choice."

"No other choice but to drug and kill her? How far does this conspiracy extend? And who's next?"

"You – you don't understand."

"The only thing I don't understand is why you're lying here in this hospital bed when you should be celebrating with the rest of them. What happened? Did your conscience finally get the best of you? It's too late for that now, you know."

"You don't understand! It was the only way – I had to tell her – I never wanted… this…"

"What was it you wanted? It wasn't enough to discredit her, ruin her reputation, take away her career. You had to kill her. Why? What are you protecting?"

"She was… too close. They will stop at nothing, Chakotay. I tried… to save her."

"By administering a lethal drug?"

"It was the only way. My activities were monitored. I had to tell her…"

"Tell her what?"

Then the old man sat up in his bed, and gripped Chakoaty's arm with a suprising force.

"The ultimate Starfleet officer," he said. Then he stared into Chakotay's eyes for several moments, closed his own eyes, and fell back into unconsciousness.

"Paris! Paris, wake up! Answer me!"

"Chakotay! It's over."

"You owe me an explanation, Paris!"

"He can't hear you."

But Chakotay remained in the hospital corridor for several hours, pacing up and down, waiting for a sign from one of the doctors that Paris was once again awake. He thought of searching for the stranger who had told him about the Psychic Sisters drug, but did not anticipate finding her. If he was to take his word on the subject, Paris had given Captain Janeway the drug in order to warn her of some impending danger. Psychic Sisters supposedly enhanced intuitive abilities; perhaps it facilitated psychic communication between individuals who had taken the drug. That would explain why Paris himself had taken it – and it would also explain why Captain Janeway's intuitions had been so focused in one particular area. Paris had known about the map in _Iberia_'s navigation system; he might have even planted it himself. Why was it so important that Captain Janeway follow it?

He put his questions to Tom and B'Elanna, but they were unable to provide further insight. Tom insisted that he had no knowledge of his father's involvement with a corrupt faction of Starfleet officers or with the Psychic Sisters drug, and Chakotay believed him. It was too dangerous to lose faith in his old friends. The three agreed to meet the following day at the hospital, but before Chakotay could return to his room in the officers' housing unit, he was interrupted.

"Seven of Nine to Chakotay." Her voice was a low whisper.

He tapped his combadge. "Go ahead, Seven."

"It is imperative that we meet tonight. There is very little time. The hangar at twenty two hundred hours. Come alone."

PAGE BREAK

"Are we alone?"

Four men met in a darkened room in the Starfleet central administration building.

"We are never alone, sir."

"Be that as it may, what can be done about the present situation involving Captain Janeway? My sources tell me she has arrived."

"I believe she has."

"What do you propose to do about it?"

"Admiral, please. Lower your voice. There is no reason for concern. The Ultimate Starfleet Officer project will proceed. Arrangements have been made to terminate the flawed prototype immediately."

"And Janeway?"

"She has made her choice. It is not in our power to save her."


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

She had escaped their stares and returned to the open gravesite. She looked across the field in the setting sun. Light sparkled dimly on the grains of asphalt and in the graves, on rusting fragments of Borg technology. The wind drew Kathryn's hair back from her face.

The sunset, by itself, would have been beautiful. She could almost imagine this sky, sheathed in blood-red light overlooking some peaceful scene, the shores of one of Earth's oceans or the river on New Earth. She could see the water, blue and red, warm just under the surface. But this small planet, as far as she could tell, was a barren wasteland. Somewhere there must have been a clearing that did not extend on this wreckage. But her eye was drawn only to the neighboring field and a collapsed piece of machinery, half a mile from the gravesite.

She followed, and recognized the debris as a guyed communication tower. The anchor system had given way but even though the tower rested entirely on one side, a rusted Starfleet insignia remained visible.

She had searched for this for so long, but it was unbelievable. Without her crew, without her ship, she was nothing. The Starfleet combadge still hung on her uniform, and the collar brass indicating her rank still adorned it. Who had the right to tell her that it all was meaningless now? Who had the right to take it away from her – her life's work, her unerring principles, her collective? She had said she didn't care, she had acted recklessly, but nothing; not the thrill of Apocrypha, not the freedom of solitude and rebellion, could have ever replaced _Voyager. _She imagined that she owed it to herself to break away. If the foundation upon which she had based all of her previous endeavors were to fall, what recourse was there but to begin anew? But then there was the matter of the individual's responsibility to society as a whole. Kathryn saw the Caretaker before her once again, asking her to sacrifice for the common good. Her hand traced the insignia on the collapsed tower, burned black from the sun.

"_Avec la garde montante, nous arrivons, nous voila!_"

She spoke these words aloud, tears streaming down her face. She had the sense of being unable to return anywhere. How could she have known of the blood on her hands? How could she have known that she was always a toy soldier, marching to a drum? And to have been so proud of it! There were some sins beyond reason, beyond forgiveness.

The girl from the cave had emerged, red light falling on her hair. Kathryn crossed the field to meet her.

She said, "You don't want to believe it. You don't want to think that your government could be capable of such atrocities. But you must face the truth."

Kathryn said nothing.

"What are you going to do?"

She turned and looked at the girl, struck by the calmness in her tone and on her fine features. "I believe that your distress call was intercepted and re-routed to my vessel. Someone wanted me to receive it."

"Or, someone wanted to make sure no one would ever receive it. That map was meant for _Voyager_, for a woman called Seven of Nine. How did you even come to acquire your vessel?"

"Apocrypha…"

"What?"

"I'm sorry," said Kathryn. "I'm trying to piece it together, but not having much luck."

The girl smiled slightly. "Perhaps you have a gift of divination. Were you assigned this vessel? I see that you are a Starfleet officer. Are you on a mission now?"

She chose to ignore the question. "Seven of Nine," she said, "is supposed to be a new prototype. But to what end? What are they hoping to achieve?"

The girl gave her a warning look. "There are some questions it may be best not to ask."

"Will this happen whether Seven consents or not?"

"I don't imagine she will be able to resist," said the girl. "The Cassandras had one another; they could put up a fight. But Seven of Nine is alone."

She saw Kathryn's face turn pale. "The Cassandras?"

"The previous prototype. Of course, that isn't what they were named originally. But every last one of them introduced herself as Cassandra, I can't think why- perhaps because of the myth of Cassandra the fortune-teller. They all looked human except for their hands, which they used to cover up with gloves. Once they escaped they were able to get away with almost anything. Starfleet couldn't control them. That is how we came to be."

The girl looked off vaguely in the distance. "There must be at least twenty of them left, maybe more. All alike, down to the color of their eyes and the implants in their hands. Blond, if I remember correctly. Tall. Gray eyes, very large." She turned her own bright blue eyes toward Kathryn. "Not a beautiful species, but tremendously functional. The Cassandras aren't afraid of anything. It takes an army to kill one of them, and I imagine that there would be many more left if they weren't all driven to their own destruction. They are, unfortunately, both murderous and suicidal. Perhaps this was simply one of your government's design flaws."

Kathryn stared ahead, far across the landfill, towards Iberia.

"I see," she said.

The girl peered at her. "You recognize what I've told you," she said after a moment, looking closer still. "You know about the Cassandras."

Kathryn sighed. "It seems I may have. The woman I was working with, on the Alpha Walker space station. She killed herself less than a week after I met her, on an expedition to a neutron star called Aurelius Prime. She was the pilot of my vessel."

The girl's face remained mostly expressionless. "Who are you?"

Slowly, Kathryn dropped her gaze from Iberia's slim frame.

"Why won't you tell me who you are? Are you trying to make me think that you are working with them? Are you trying to make me suspect you?"

"What does it matter?" snapped Kathryn. "If I were one of them, I couldn't destroy you now, not with one ship and no weapons. No communication. I'm a prisoner, just like you."

"We have hidden nothing from you. Why keep secrets? I don't believe you are working with them, but I also don't believe you were approached by a Cassandra for no reason. Why did she want to send you here? What could she have known about you?"

Kathryn threw her head back and laughed. "That I'm the Captain of Voyager," she said, her voice breaking. "And that I rescued Seven of Nine from the collective. That's what she could have known about me!"

The girl's eyes, which had before struck Kathryn as terribly cold, betrayed suddenly a hint of kindness. "Oh, I understand. She wanted to kill you."

"No doubt!" Kathryn laughed still through her tears. "If she's as evil as you say. But I believed that I was following a vision. I believed there was a greater purpose."

"Here," said the girl, quite seriously, "we follow our own visions. Do you want to see?"

She removed a small vial from one of the implants in her arm. In it was a small amount of a blue liquid.

"As I've told you," she said, "we are a flawed prototype. Our flaw is that unlike the Borg, we cannot adapt to new and challenging situations. We assimilate information, but do not transform it. That is why we have been so easily weakened. Still we have the power of foresight. We cannot change the future, but we can see it. We can watch it before it plays out. And we can see into the minds of others, hear the innermost thoughts and feel the innermost desires even of our enemies."

She lifted the vial and drank, then drew in her breath sharply.

"Oh! I'm sorry." Her red lips twisted into a smile. "Did you want to try it?"

Kathryn stared, transfixed. "No."

"There isn't any more. But I suppose that if you let me kiss you, you can at least taste it. Don't you want to know what it's like, Captain?"

She felt her senses blurring, dizziness overtaking her. "What is it?"

"Your government has nicknamed it Psychic Sisters. It has enabled us to communicate with one another as the Borg do."

The girl moved closer, timidly. "Oh, you are curious," she said softly, "I can see that, but I could see so much more if you would only let me show you."

Kathryn found herself unable to move away. "You are trying to assimilate me. You said that you were incapable of destroying me, but that isn't true, is it?"

"It will be less painful that way," whispered the girl, laying her white hands on Kathryn's shoulders. "Tomorrow, we will all be destroyed. Trust me when I say you will not die in fear. Let your consciousness be added to our own."

In spite of herself, Kathryn allowed the girl's hands to travel to her throat, to tangle in her hair. The cold metal stung the nape of her neck. The girl's eyes were blue fire. She was half woman, half monster, and she was beautiful.

_Chakotay, look at me,_ she thought. _Look at me for the last time._

Or was it even her own thoughts that she heard? They could have belonged to the girl, or even to Cassandra, still flying through the jaws of Aurelius Prime. They could have belonged to Chakotay himself, or to the Admirals in San Francisco, secretly engineering the future. So many thoughts. So many voices.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Seven of Nine arrived at exactly twenty-two hundred hours. She was not wearing the Starfleet uniform that had been granted to her upon her return to Earth. She greeted Chakotay with a brief nod, then glanced apprehensively at the fleet of shuttlecraft that surrounded them.

"Forgive me," she said, "but it was necessary that we meet this way. Time is of the essence, so I'll be brief. I was recently approached by a group of high-ranking Starfleet officers."

"Approached?"

Her eyes locked with his. "I was offered what you might call a ride on the fast track. Promotions, appointments on prestigious vessels. All in exchange for my participation."

"Participation in what, Seven?"

"The Ultimate Starfleet Officer."

"Owen Paris said the same phrase earlier today. Should it mean something to me?

Seven shook her head. "There are powerful men in the government," she said, "more powerful than the highest grade Admirals in Starfleet. They plan to re-engineer the human race, using a synthesis of human and Borg genetic material. The Ultimate Starfleet Officer is their pilot project, and it is being carried out by a group of corrupt officers working inside Starfleet. These men are dangerous, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their end."

Chakotay stood in silence.

"Their intention was to use me as a living prototype for their Borg-human hybrid. They supposed, wrongly, that I was not loyal to Federation principles and could be persuaded to participate. As a consequence of my refusal, my life is in danger. I am leaving Earth tonight."

Chakotay's mind was racing. He could hardly understand what was being said. "Captain Janeway-"

"If you want to save Captain Janeway, you must return to Apocrypha. There is a race that begins tomorrow at eight hundred hours. Approximately half of the ships in that race will be manned by personnel associated with the Ultimate Starfleet Officer project. At a certain point in the race, they will break off from the group and proceed towards a planet bordering two Federation zones. I think you may have already heard of its existence. The officers intend to destroy every living organism on that planet."

Seven reached out her hand and offered up a small metal briefcase.

"This is my access to one of the racing shuttles. Do not let them see you, just respond with the appropriate hails. Do as they say. There is nothing you can do to stop these men. You will be fortunate to survive, as will I. Do you understand?"

For the first time, Chakotay noticed Seven's hands. She was wearing a pair of black racing gloves.

"Seven –" he gasped.

They heard a metal door slam.

"I have to go," said Seven.

Chakotay turned in the direction of the sound. Standing beside one of the shuttlecraft was the tall, blonde woman he had seen at the bar. Seeing Chakotay, she gave him a lopsided smile.

He caught Seven's arm. "Where are you going?" he whispered fiercely. "What makes you think you can trust her?"

For answer, she looked at him intently for a moment then turned away.

"Seven, I order you not to do this!" he said, but evidently she had no use for the chain of command anymore. She followed the woman into the shuttlecraft. He intercepted her just before the door slammed.

"What do you think you're doing?" The blonde woman had clamped down on his arm with tremendous force. Seven looked straight ahead, and said nothing.

"You have got a lot of nerve after what I did for you. You think you can't trust me? I'm the only one you can trust. I told you in the tavern that if you wanted to save her life, you would have to go back to Alpha Walker, but you didn't believe me. Maybe you didn't believe me about Apocrypha either, but it's true, all of it. However big you think this is, however far you think it extends, I'm telling you that you have no idea. Question my words and let her die, or do as I say and maybe, just maybe, you will both survive – or at least you will die together. That's what you want, isn't it? Oh yes, I think so, Commander. Isn't that what we all want, after all? To die _together_?"

Still, he fought her grasp. She hissed with laughter and finally released him. He fell back heavily on the wall. From behind the tinted window, the woman continued to stare, her scarred face, somehow, at once mocking and sincere. She stared until his own gaze reassured her. The door slammed again, and the shuttle retreated from the hangar.

He followed it outside, watched it glide on the airstrip and ascend. In one hand he held the briefcase. The shuttle's taillights flashed on the ground once, twice. He wondered if he would ever see Seven again.

He stood motionless on the airstrip until the ship had vanished completely. Two hours later, he boarded his own shuttlecraft for Alpha Walker.

PAGE BREAK

"Stop!" In a final plea for sanity, Kathryn took hold of the girl and pushed back before the poison touched her lips. They stood for a moment, motionless, Kathryn's hands clasped around the girl's pale wrists. She was beginning to think that all that had happened in recent weeks had been a game of the mind.

The girl stepped back, visibly afraid.

"You have resisted me."

"Not by force," said Kathryn.

"No," said the girl, "something else. Perhaps I have been mistaken. I thought that our message was intended for Seven of Nine, but perhaps it was you who were meant to save us."

"I don't believe you."

"Everyone has a plan, Captain," said the girl. "The Fleet Admirals up above and the crewmen down below."

"I don't know what that means," said Kathryn, "and anyway I can't save you. I can't even save myself. For a long time, I thought I was like Cassandra, that I had a secret wish to die. The thing I hated above all else was gravity. I would have given anything to be free of it, and I suppose that's what made me think I wanted to die. But maybe all I wanted was to see the truth that the victorious homecoming of _Voyager _had hidden from me, from all of us. I wanted it so badly that I ran away from everyone and everything that I loved."

"Do you regret that now?"

"I don't think I had a choice."

"Yet you don't believe in destiny. Do you believe in the power of your own mind to unlock the mysteries of this world, Captain? Or if you don't, tell me exactly what it is you do believe in. I have been deprived of the gift of a fully functioning mind; I don't know your freedom. But I know this - if your mind is weak you will die with the rest of us."

"And otherwise?"

"You will adapt."


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

Warning: Character death

_Mais moi, Carmen je t'aime encore!_

_Carmen, helas! Moi je t'adore!_

_O ma Carmen, laisse-moi te sauver_

_Et me sauver avec toi._

_But Carmen, I still love you!_

_Carmen I tell you that I adore you!_

_Let me save you, and in doing so, save myself._

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen, you are listening to the Apocrypha Broadband Connection, available wherever the fine folks at Starfleet can't shut us down. Whether you're a racing buff or joining us for the first time, remember one thing - don't try this at home. The question on everyone's mind this morning: Who can beat the almighty supernova debris from our beloved SN 2378xd, before it crashes into planet Theresia at a whopping 600 miles per second? No playing around, this is the purest game of beat-the-clock that ever was, first ship to the planet and back gets the prize, and of course jumping to warp is an automatic disqualification. Let's hear it for the brave and undisputedly crazy astronauts on our Alpha Walker station attempting this feat today, ladies and gentlemen. Hold onto your hats, and if you have a strip of gold-pressed latinum riding on this, maybe you should have held onto that too.

"We're getting a green light from Apocrypha… all systems are go. Waiting for it… Countdown has begun… Five seconds… and… They're off!

"_Durango_ has taken an early lead, but here comes the _Abilene,_ making a bit of a dangerous pass there - no harm no foul. _Jephte_ on its way, inching past the favorite _Montague,_ looking a bit sluggish compared to what we might have expected for this first quarter of the race.

"I've got the supernova debris on our grid now, and it is not slowing down. Our stragglers are getting wind of this, _Hyppolita _picking up speed, trying to pass _Leland – _intercepted by newcomer _Esperanza_ on the right. This does not look good for _Hyppolita._ A crucial moment in the race – the pilots have been trained not to panic when they see debris approaching, but that is easier said than done. _Jephte_ in the lead now, _Montague _a close second. _Durango _looks like it's falling back, and --- Ladies and gentlemen, _Esperanza_ has jumped to warp and forfeited the race! _Esperanza_ is out of the race. Let's see if we've got copycats – _Joliette _has also jumped to warp. Not a good sign. The view must be deadly from up there. Let's see who's going to hang on… _Hydra _is gone. _Persephone, Bryony, _and_ Calandra _have all jumped to warp. _Esperanza_ is now out of range, and it looks like the others are following suit. Five more ships are now travelling at warp speed and out of the race: _Viola, Tourmaline, Winthrop, Linea, _and our early frontrunner _Durango._ I hope you've all got deep pockets because only a psychic could have possibly predicted this!"

PAGE BREAK

A thin, wiry woman of about fifty, with tightly wound black and gray curls encircling her head, approached the Apocrypha security desk with a deadly expression on her face.

"Robertson, there's a problem."

The security guard eyed her from beneath his cap. "What is it Margaret?"

"We've found something in the storage basement. Get someone to relieve you right away."

"Is it weapons?"

"Just get down there."

PAGE BREAK

Chakotay sat rigidly behind the conn, doing his best to keep the other Starfleet ships unsuspicious of _Viola._

"_Esperanza_ to all Starfleet vessels. Be advised we are approaching the Federation border. Ready your weapons."

_Hang on Kathryn. Just a few more minutes. Please hang on…_

PAGE BREAK

Kathryn stood near the top of the new tower, surveying her work. It had taken days, but she had succeeded. The structure itself looked half a Borg cube, half a remnant of what it had once been. Below her, the bodies of the dead lay, holes in their faces where the Borg implants had been.

"I'm getting a signal! It's live!"

She saw a shadow pass over the ground. The sky grew overcast.

"Captain! They're coming!"

Then the ships appeared, as if out of nothingness. Ten, twenty, maybe thirty.

"Run for cover!"

"It's too late! Get underground!"

But Kathryn did not leave her post. She gripped the arms of the tower and faced the ships circling above. If this was indeed her destiny, she was determined to see it through. They moved closer, and the wind cut through her hair and pulled her uniform against her body.

"Starfleet vessels, this is Captain Kathryn Janeway of _Voyager._ Stop what you're doing."

"We have to get underground!"

"Go!" she commanded, not looking down. She waited for a reply from the ships. None came.

"There are innocent people on this planet. And even if you kill me, you can't hide forever. The truth will come out. And you will have to answer to justice."

She only heard engines, coming closer.

"We can put an end to this, together. We can rebuild our organization. I am asking you to power down your weapons and retreat."

The first blast fell like a shock wave on the field. The tower was blown apart, and Captain Janeway's small body lay crushed under the debris. Only a few living drones remained above ground.

"Is she dead?"

"I don't know," snapped the girl. "I have to get her out. Help me!"

"Gently - all right? Go slowly. That's it."

They stared at Kathryn's face, covered in blood.

"Is she breathing?"

"I can't tell."

The girl lifted her head towards the sky.

"There's something I have to do."

"Do you want to bury her apart from the others?"

"No! We have to find something. A pin. It has the shape of the Starfleet symbol. You saw her wearing it didn't you? Don't you see she's missing it?"

The girl was met with incredulous stares, but she was sure. "Hurry! There are only a few seconds left! Help me find it."

Her small hands searched the rubble, clawing through the dirt until she found the combadge. She dusted it off and hastily replaced it on Kathryn's uniform.

The girl reached down slowly, as if to touch the dying woman. And then as she had foreseen, Kathryn's body began to dematerialize, and she was taken from the planet.

"Look!"

"What's happening to her?"

Moments later, the second blast struck, and the girl fell on the ground dead, an expression of gratitude frozen on her face.


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

When the general director of the Apocrypha racing club died in a sport-related accident, he was succeeded by his managing director. This woman, whose first name was Margaret and whose last name few people knew, had a tremendous grudge against Starfleet. She took special pride in organizing targeted affronts, and since her appointment, Apocrypha's collection of illegally acquired vessels had nearly doubled. One of them, a particularly Starfleet-inspired specimen with a full compliment of photon torpedoes, had been baptized the _Margaret Pearl._

To see her now, however, one would almost think her a Starfleet Admiral and not a member of an underground movement of any kind. She stood perfectly erect, her luminous curls wound around her head with military precision. At her feet were several locked briefcases, all bearing the Starfleet seal.

"What in the hell is this?" she demanded.

A wide-eyed security guard stared back at her. "Carson found them at the end of his shift last night," he said. "We don't know what they are."

"It's pretty obvious where they come from. These are combinations, I guess?"

"I think so."

She glanced sharply at the small crowd of Apocrypha employees, all of whom barely returned her gaze. Then without another word she took a crowbar from a rack of tools at one end of the storage room, and smashed open all of the briefcases, one by one. The young security guard jumped back, hit with a metal shard.

Inside the briefcases were hundreds of vials of a bright blue liquid. The blue reflected in Margaret's dark eyes.

"This is bullshit," she said.

"What do you think it is?"

She emptied one of the briefcases out onto the storage room floor. She picked up a vial, opened it, sniffed its contents, and dropped it, crushing it underneath her black boot.

"This is bullshit," she said again. "For fifty years, we've existed just to spite Starfleet, to get in their way. And now we've become a stomping ground for one of their experiments."

One of the workers had opened one of the vials. Margaret tipped it forward towards his mouth. He sputtered, and dropped the vial.

"You want to drink that?" she asked. "I'm sure it's really good for you."

There was no reply.

"Okay," she said, in a mildly softer tone. "This is a collective mistake here. I don't blame any one in particular. We've been too lax. We've let them in, and now we're paying the price. But no one is going to make a fool of this place, not as long as I'm still breathing and I've still got blood in my veins. Do you understand me? I want the entire station searched, and I want all of this material destroyed. From now on, no Starfleet officer leaves here alive."


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

By the time Chakotay returned to Alpha Walker, the airfield was lined with armed guards. He had no choice but to land _Viola_, and he emerged, Captain Janeway nearly lifeless in his arms.

"Stop right there!"

"Who are you?"

"She's Starfleet! Ready weapons!"

"Wait!" Chakotay shouted. "Don't fire. She will die without immediate medical attention."

Four of the guards had surrounded him. In a moment, a rifle was in his back.

"Move, Starfleet."

His mind raced. "Did you find out? Do you think I'm with them? I'm not. I'm just trying to save my friend. I tried to intercept them, I tried to prevent it." He scanned the line frantically. "You!" he called, recognizing the elderly security guard he had met days earlier. "You remember me, don't you? You know my friend. She was Cassandra's racing partner. Don't you see she's dying?"

The elderly man narrowed his eyes.

"What were you doing in that race?"

"I told you, I was trying to save her! She was a target in the Starfleet attack. She wouldn't have even been there if it hadn't been for Cassandra, and what we found on the _Iberia_ that night."

"Carson," he said to the man holding the rifle in Chakotay's back. "Let them go. Get a doctor."

"But -"

"Let them go."

PAGE BREAK

"I'll be a grave robber before I'll turn into one of you! No! Don't touch me… The communication tower… We can use it to convey a message. It's not to late. It's not… It's not too late! It's not too late!"

"Kathryn-"

Finally, with a great gasp, she awoke. Her eyes flew open for the first time in days. Her heart was pounding.

She frowned. "Chakotay? Where am I? What - "

"Don't try to get up."

"Where am I?" she repeated.

"On Alpha Walker."

"Alpha Walker - why?"

"Starfleet opened fire on the planet. Do you remember that?"

"I - I remember - what about the others? Chakotay, are they all dead?"

"I don't know," he answered.

"I've got to find them. I've got to stop this - "

"Kathryn, there is nothing you can do. Thirty disguised warships flew out of Alpha Walker three days ago. This is bigger than any of us realized. What these men are after - something called the Ultimate -"

"The Ultimate Starfleet Officer, I know," she said. "They told me. But Seven of Nine--"

"She escaped. I'm not sure where she is. But there's something I need to tell you about your racing partner, Cassandra. I think she's still alive."

Kathryn sat up slowly. "I highly doubt that."

"I've seen her. She took Seven with her. She said she was the only one we could trust."

"It wasn't the same one you saw."

"The same one?"

She nodded. "Yes. Cassandra Weatherfield… wasn't really Cassandra Weatherfield. She was one of the last remaining drones belonging to another Borg-human prototype. I see no reason to think that Seven will be safe with one of them."

"But she led me to you," he said. "She told me how to find you. If it weren't for her I never would have known."

"I think Cassandra wanted to kill me."

Chakotay rose and walked toward the window. Slowly, she lifted herself from the bed and joined him. She laid a hand on his arm.

"You were the one that saved me," she said. "I'm alive because of you."

He had turned away from her, and it was with reluctance that he faced her again.

"I may not have been able to save you, Kathryn," he said. "Not really."

"What do you mean?"

"The doctors were able to repair your injuries, but nothing more than that. You've been given a lethal drug, a biologic that these men developed to facilitate the hybrid process. They call it-"

"Psychic Sisters?"

He nodded.

"I know what it is. But Chakotay, I didn't take it. They offered it to me - the girl offered it to me, and for a second I almost wanted it - but I didn't take it. I wouldn't."

Chakotay shook his head. "You don't understand. You were given this drug against your will. Owen Paris arranged for it to happen, I can only assume at the medical exam you took after _Voyager _landed. He took the drug and he's dying of it. He wanted you to know the truth."

"That can't be."

"Kathryn, it's the reason you've been having psychic experiences. It's why you were drawn to Apocrypha in the first place. Everything that has happened to you in the past month is all because of this. And I'm afraid that I don't know how to stop what's happened to Paris from happening to you."

She left his side briefly and paced around the medical bay.

"I'm not sick," she ventured after a moment. "I was hurt in the attack, but - not sick. And certainly not dying."

She stopped, seeing his expression. "Hey," she said softly, returning to him, "Chakotay, do you really think I'm dying of this? Do you really believe that all of my experiences and all the things I've seen were just the result of some psychotropic medication? Biologics?"

Tears shone in his eyes. "I know it's true. Paris admitted it to me. He admitted giving you the drug so that you could find out what was really happening at Apocrypha. But what I can't understand is what it was all for. What is the sense in knowing the truth when knowing does nothing to prevent it? How can these people make you watch as they destroy everything that was meaningful to you? As they destroy a whole world that they created? They will stop at nothing to protect their secret. Paris knew that, he knew he couldn't risk exposing them - but in the end he couldn't save his own life, and he couldn't save yours. Did he really think that your life was worth giving up for this? Not to save them; not to stop the crusade; but just to _know_?"


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six

_Les voici!_

_Voici la quadrille!_

_Here they are!_

_Here come the Cuadrilla!_

"What I am saying," Margaret repeated in a tone that did nothing to disguise her impatience, "is that the framework of this entire organization must be reevaluated. Mandate, hiring procedures, security procedures… Well, we've never turned away from a fight before, have we? Maybe it's time this little racing club grew a set of -- Hang on, that's my door. I'll have to get back to you. Come in!"

The doors to her bleak, bright office slid open and two Starfleet officers strode in, holding rifles to the backs of her two chief security guards. Margaret stiffened.

"Good evening ma'am," said one of the officers.

"Good evening," she replied. "I see the jackals have made themselves comfortable."

"Now we don't want any trouble, ma'am. You deliver Janeway and Chakotay over to us, and no one gets hurt. That's a promise."

"Janeway and Chakotay? I've never heard of them."

"Two Starfleet officers who intercepted our mission. We have a warrant for their arrest, and we have reason to believe they are hiding out here."

"Here?" Margaret stared at her security guards.

"I see I have bigger problems than Starfleet after all. So what you're telling me is, you're going to take your officers, and then you're going to get the hell off my space station?"

"We're only interested in our officers, ma'am."

"Then arrest them. And once you have, I want to see the back of you as if Alpha Walker were a bomb about to blow, do you understand me? And you had better take all of your valuables with you when you go."

The officers turned her security guards around and prepared to leave.

"A woman in your position," said the other officer as he exited, "should not make threats."

The doors clicked behind them. She stared straight ahead, unblinking, and got back on the communication system.

"It's worse than I thought. You really have no idea. It's all right, neither do they. They think they can get away with this, but they don't know Apocrypha. There will come a new day for us. Cassandra Weatherfield may have made some mistakes, but she was right about one thing. You can't be afraid to kill, and you can't be afraid to die."

PAGE BREAK

Chakotay stood, half dressed, above his bed. Somehow, he could not bring himself to lie in it. The night was long, and he could not imagine when morning would come.

Slowly, Kathryn entered from the adjoining room. "I heard you walking around, are you all right?"

He turned, wearily, to face her.

"You're not still thinking I'm going to die, are you?"

He said nothing.

"Look, the doctor that examined me did a full toxicology screen. We'll know in a few days."

He could only think to himself that a few days might be too late.

"Chakotay, I've been thinking."

She moved closer to him and sat down rather carelessly on his bed. "I've been thinking that I owe you an apology."

"For what?"

She sighed. "All of those things that I said… and did… when we were on Alpha Walker, before all of this happened. I need you to know, that wasn't me."

"It wasn't?" he said quietly.

She frowned. "Well, of course not. I mean, I - did you want it to be?"

He turned away from her. "No," he said. "Yes. I don't know. I don't know what I wanted."

"Well, you can't have wanted that. I was getting ready to send us all up to high heaven if I remember correctly."

He managed a smile. "I dimly recall."

"Anyway… I'm sorry."

His eyes sparkled. "It's all right. I should have known that the only time I'd ever get to kiss you would be in the middle of an interplanetary disaster."

She laughed. "Something like that!" But then she grew serious, and rose from the bed. "Chakotay."

He followed her gaze to the window, and saw the Starfleet ships circling overhead.

"Captain Kathryn Janeway. Starfleet Security Command. Open up! We have a warrant for your arrest."

In a moment they were surrounded. Kathryn flinched as they grabbed her arms, still sore from the injury.

"Could you watch it? You almost killed me two days ago, isn't that enough?"

"Shut up and listen."

"Captain Kathryn Janeway, Commander Chakotay. You are under arrest for obstruction of justice. Your orders are to return to Starfleet Headquarters and face all criminal proceedings as per the Starfleet Bureau of Investigations. Should you fail to comply with these orders, your resistance will be met with all necessary force."


	27. Chapter 27

Warning: Character death

Chapter Twenty-Seven

_A quoi bon tout cela?_

_Tous des mots superflus._

_What good is all of this?_

_Meaningless words._

Kathryn Janeway stood at the holding room window. She could see her reflection in it, the pale skin and the radiant blue of her eyes. She thought she looked like a china doll.

"I've watched you so many times, like this," she heard him say. The investigations bureau had confiscated her Starfleet jacket, and she wore only the sleeveless gray undershirt. Her hands were on the ledge, her arms wide apart, straight and stiff.

"What did you want to do?"

She waited, barely breathing, knowing that this was a test of her sanity, perhaps even a harbinger of how long she had left to live. She felt certain that he would come closer, that his hands would touch her shoulders - that they would travel down the length of her arms, and intertwine with her hands, just as they had…

But when she opened her eyes and dared herself to turn around, she found that he was standing the entire length of the room away. He caught her eye then stopped to leave a few computer pads on the otherwise bare table. His comment about watching her, she realized, must have been meant more for himself than for her.

"Apparently," he said, "the two of us attempted to sabotage a highly sensitive international security initiative to contain a potentially lethal biohazard."

"A biohazard."

"That's their story and they're sticking with it. I know it sounds like a joke."

"It is a joke, Chakotay."

"One that may very well cost us our careers and our freedom. You need to understand that Starfleet is not the same organization it was when you left Earth seven years ago."

"If it was that way to begin with. Who knows how long this has been going on? Seven years may have been nothing. Maybe we were just lucky."

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"My toxicology screen came back."

His eyes widened. "What did it say?"

"It found no trace of Psychic Sisters, or any other drug."

"I don't understand. Owen Paris told me that they gave it to you. Why would he admit to that if it weren't true?"

She leaned back against the ledge. "Believe me, I've been asking myself the same question. Of course, there's the possibility that the test could have been wrong. Maybe I was given a negligible amount, or maybe it just didn't show up on the test. But the other possibility is that Paris thought the drug was administered to me when it wasn't. He couldn't have overseen the procedure - it would have looked extremely suspicious if he had been hanging around the medical facility during routine physical exams."

"Then how do you explain the premonitions you had? Your connection to Apocrypha - the hidden map - all of it. If you weren't drugged, how did those things happen?"

She smiled. "I guess you'll never believe that I actually am psychic?"

"It's nothing against you, Kathryn. But people don't grow psychic abilities out of nowhere."

"I just find it interesting that you of all people would be skeptical about this."

"What does that mean?"

She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "You've always been open-minded, especially about spirituality and paranormal experiences. Why is it so hard for you to believe that something of that nature could happen to me?

"Do you… consider that you've had a spiritual transformation of some kind?"

She laughed. "Don't sound so shocked! Am I the last person in the world that such a thing would happen to?"

"No - that's not what I -"

"What do you mean? Ever since this happened to me you've been trying to find some explanation other than the fact that I could possibly be psychic. No matter how far-fetched. You had me believing I was mentally ill."

"You believed that on your own."

Kathryn gestured impatiently. "Only because I felt different, and I couldn't explain it. I still do feel different. That hasn't gone away."

"All right… Different how?"

Her voice was softer. "I'm not sure," she said, "but I know that I see things differently. It's as if all of the things that were hidden before have become illuminated somehow, but at the expense of what I knew to be true. Starfleet was my whole life, and just like that, it's over. What I thought I'd find on _Voyager _I could only find on _Iberia_. I looked in the mirror, and I saw it. There was a time when returning to Earth was all I wanted. But now…"

"Now you know there is another purpose out there for you. You know what you have to do, and what you have to fight for."

She stared at him. "Exactly."

In that moment, suddenly, he recognized her again. She was once again the woman he had always known, the face of an angel and the heart of a soldier.

"If you get out of here…"

"No. When we get out of here."

Slowly, he joined her by the window. "Kathryn, you know there was a time for me to follow you – that I would have done anything, no questions asked. But I can't do that anymore."

There was a pause. "I see…"

"I can't take on this crusade with you. It's too hard. Maybe I could have done it then, but not now."

"What are you saying – that you want to forget everything you know about Starfleet, everything we've seen? You want to just walk away from it?"

"I don't know – except I know I have to let you go. And I have to find my own way. This is your fight. You know it's true, Kathryn. I can't love you unless I let you go."

"If you're going to break my heart, you could at least look at me while you're doing it."

He took her in his arms. "I never meant to," he whispered. "But it's no use. Kathryn, don't you see it's no use?"

"No use…" she repeated blankly, the words causing her terrible pain even as she spoke them.

On the right side of her face, there was a scar from the Starfleet attack that the doctors who treated her could not repair. He took her face in his hands and kissed the scar.

It struck him at that moment that his idea of living any kind of conventional life with her had always been misplaced and unrealistic. It was as if he had never before understood that the most precious things in life are not those we are capable of controlling or even keeping – that they are almost always out of reach and fading, hidden away, but never forgotten.

PAGE BREAK

The next morning, word spread over official channels that Owen Paris had died of respiratory failure.

The gentleman who was to succeed him as director of communications was a rather white-haired Fleet Admiral with a distinguished record. His most recent act of bravery was a mission to contain a biological threat, the details of which, not surprisingly, were highly classified.

THE END


End file.
